more than 200,000 minors may have been victims of sexual assault in Spain, report says

After the Sauvé report in Franceit is Spain’s turn to tackle the taboo of child crime within the Church. More than 200,000 minors could have been victims of sexual assault by religious people in the country, according to a report published Friday October 27 by an independent commission of inquiry into child crime in the Catholic Church.

The report does not provide precise figures, but contains a survey carried out at the request of this commission among more than 8,000 people, according to which 0.6% of the Spanish adult population (nearly 39 million people) claimed to have were sexually assaulted, while they were minors, by religious figures. Additionally, a slightly lower number of Spaniards (0.53%) reported being sexually assaulted as minors by lay people working in religious institutions.

The Church’s response deemed “insufficient”

The document was submitted to the Spanish Congress of Deputies, at the end of the work of an independent commission, the first established in this country to assess the extent of child crime in the Catholic Church. He is critical of the latter, deploring that its reaction to cases of child crime within it was “insufficient”. Among the measures proposed in the report is the creation by the State of a fund to pay reparations to victims.

For its part, the Church explains that it has put in place protocols for the treatment of sexual violence, as well as offices for “child protection” within the dioceses. She admitted in June to having collected the testimony of 927 victims.

This figure was, however, far below the 2,206 counted by the Spanish daily El Paíswhich has had its own database since 2018. “According to experts, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” says the media El País. The report submitted to Congress seems to prove him right.