researchers and historians Elena Rafols and Maria Verduof circlea group of Research from the University of Barcelona on supervised childhood under Francoismhave asked this Monday that the abuses and the suffering suffered by these minors are included in the Historical Memory Law or in new legislation.
The Circare group urges that the law recognize the violence suffered by minors under guardianship during the regime
Both experts have appeared this Monday before the Commission of Inquiry on the Pedophilia in the Church of the Parliament of Catalonia to report on your research. Together with them, other experts on sexual violence in sport and a specialized resource for the prevention of child sexual abuse have also appeared.
Verdú has demanded that the survivors and their relatives “can consult and order” the files that include the stay of these minors in centers dependent on the Church or lay people, given that currently, as it is documentation related to minors, they have to spend 50 years to be consulted, a period of time that can make these testimonies forget. “It must be taken into account that when we spoke to many of these people, most of them were expressing what they had experienced for the first time, they are very fragile people,” Verdú warned.
Historians have reported that a large part of the people interviewed expressed that they suffered abuse, hunger, cold and physical punishmentand it was indifferent if the centers were managed by religious orders or not.
They also appreciated that the children and young people received some formative classwhile the girls should focus on sewing workshops and embroideries, which were later sold, “with few hours of class.” “One of the women told us that during the six years she spent in a center she did not have a pencil or paper,” the researcher recounted.
Physical punishment was common and daily and some girls were forced to wash the nuns’ sanitary pads, in summer and winter, even with ice water due to the cold, according to the testimonies collected.
During the Commission has also intervened Pepe Godoy, victim of abuse by a sports coach in Basauri (Vizcaya), and which he made public 36 years after suffering them. Godoy has read a story of his, ‘The monster with three heads’, in which he recounts his experience and how he remained silent for 36 years due to shame until he had daughters of the age in which he suffered the abuse, when he decided to confront the monster and fight against it.
Related news
This Monday, Pepe Godoy has asked for “a lot of training and a lot of empathy” for the victims and that they receive free and qualified psychological help, to get ahead with their lives.
The speaker has participated in the Cases Project, at a European level, on interpersonal violence against minors in sport, in which the University of Vic (Barcelona) has participated. This study indicates that 20% of the 1,472 people in Spain between the ages of 18 and 30 who have participated in it have suffered sexual violence with contact and 36% without contact in the field of sport, according to data provided by Eva Cirera, a biomedical doctor who has collaborated on it.