A historic demand in favor of victims of sexual abuse in the Church begins its legislative journey this Tuesday. The Congress of Deputies will debate, at the request of the Parliament of Catalonia, the advisability of reforming the Penal Code to declare crimes linked to pedophilia imprescriptible. If successful, the legal change will be developed while waiting for the reparation measures for Church victims proposed a year ago by the Ombudsman to be finalized.
Victims welcome the first step in the legislation, but warn there is still work to be done. “The time for good words from politicians is over, we need action and remedial measures,” says psychiatrist and activist Miquel Àngel Hurtado, who suffered abuse at the hands of Montserrat monastery monk Andreu Soler.
The Catalan deputies who will defend the proposal in Congress are Judith Alcalá (PSC), Raquel Sans (ERC) and Susana Segovia (Comuns). The three parliamentarians hope that Congress will support the proposal with a large majority and that the PP (which abstained in the parliamentary vote of the last legislature thanks to the support of the three left groups and Junts y Ciudadanos) will not reject it . he.
This measure is, for the moment, the only result of the pioneering commission of inquiry into pedophilia in the Church that Parliament held during the last legislature. The early elections did not allow conclusions to be drawn, but the parliamentary work of listening to victims, experts and certain ecclesiastical representatives (some stood up to the commission, like Cardinal Juan José Omella) was almost finished.
“This is an important modification of the Penal Code to protect minors against attacks that scar them for life,” says Alcalá. Segovia defends the imprescriptibility of sexual crimes against minors, since it is a type of crime associated with late complaints. “Victims are generally ashamed and often cannot complain, for example until the death of their parents,” explains the parliamentarian.
Sans emphasizes that a similar measure has been approved in 23 countries and highlights the “solidarity” of those affected, since the imprescriptibility of crimes will benefit future victims, but not those who have suffered abuse in the past, since in their cases the crimes have prescribed.
The legal change, however, raises suspicions among criminal law experts. The professor at the Open University of Catalonia (UOC) and the University of Lleida (UdL) Josep Maria Tamarit, who also coordinated the Ombudsman’s report on pedophilia, focuses his criticism on politicians: “They provoke “expectation that they will not be able to be satisfied and give the impression that they are tackling the problem, without promoting measures that could be more effective.” In this sense, Tamarit emphasizes that reparation to victims “is still waiting.”
A few weeks ago, the mediator, Ángel Gabilondo, urged the Cortes to implement as quickly as possible the “concrete measures” included in his report issued a year ago, such as the status of victim of sexual abuse, the celebration of a public event and the creation of a state compensation fund with the participation of the Church. This fund has generated disagreements between the government and the Episcopal Conference and even between members of the religious institution.
Pending tasks
“There is a lack of political will, both in Catalonia and in Madrid, and the victims remain powerless,” denounces Hurtado. Reparation does not only operate at the symbolic level, with the recognition of abuse and cover-up on the part of the Church, as well as the lack of control of abuse in educational establishments linked to congregations by the public administration. This must also be remedied with compensation, of which we do not yet know how they will be calculated or where their funds will come from.
“Who pays us the expenses we have had for years on private therapy? Who decides who, how much and how to pay? Are the bishops the ones who decide? “Will they be judges and parties? » emphasizes Hurtado. “There are legal mechanisms to make the Church pay, we will see if the most progressive government in history will lose power by its words or by its actions,” he adds.
Beyond compensation, Hurtado recalls that “Montserrat could decide to organize an act and erect a monument in memory of the victims of pedophilia caused by the monks of the monastery, to ensure that this is not forgotten, but he doesn’t do it. On the institutional level, after hearing several victims last year, Parliament decided to award the institution’s gold medal to the monastery, even though it covered up the abuse for years, even though it finally recognized them in 2019 after their publication.
Tamarit recalls that the Mediator’s proposal went through an Arbitration Center, similar to that created in 2011 in Belgium, in which the Catholic Church agreed to participate and assume two thirds of the costs of the institution, in addition of the compensation accepted by the organization. in favor of the victims. “Even if, of course, this model requires a will on the part of the Church and the State,” adds the professor.
Hurtado commends the Australian model, whose National Child Sexual Abuse Reparations Program allowed victims to receive counseling throughout the reparations process, accepted individualized compensation, and provided a direct personal response (e.g., apology from the responsible institution, an acknowledgment of responsibility and commitments of non-repetition).
Such a thing has not yet happened in Spain. “The Church is a plural institution and, until now, the responses of different congregations have been very different. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Conference did not do things as expected and made decisions without clear direction, based on the pressures it received,” criticizes Tamarit.
The steps taken
Sans highlights the measures taken by the different regional administrations to support new victims of child abuse: from Navarrese law to the commitment of the Generalitat of Catalonia to Barnahus, a model of comprehensive care where, in a home, far from police stations and hospitals, a conducive environment is created to care for minor victims of abuse. The parliamentarian also highlights measures aimed at preventing child abuse in leisure spaces.
For its part, Segovia argues that its group will present to Parliament this legislature a reform of the Civil Code so that victims can request compensation, since the imprescriptibility of civil action can, unlike criminal action, be applied with effects retroactive. This is another of the measures demanded by the victims and which, in the words of Hurtado, “depends entirely on Catalonia and not on Madrid”.
