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The Ombudsman calls for that the State and the Church “collaborate” to compensate victims of pedophilia

The Ombudsman has demanded this Thursday in Congress that the State and the Church “collaborate together” to compensate victims of pedophilia. “I consider it essential that, for the good of the victims, they adopt joint commitments,” declared Ángel Gabilondo. A yr after finishing his Report on sexual abuse within the area of the Catholic Church and the function of public powers, Gabilondo has gone to the Plenary to defend his work and urge the deputies, who by a big majority entrusted him with the investigation in 2022 (solely Vox voted in opposition to), that they settle for the 24 suggestions that he has integrated in his examine. The most vital: compensate the victims of pedophilia within the Church.

Gabilondo proposes the creation of “a state fund” for cost “in those cases in which, due to the statute of limitations of the crime or other causes,” it’s unattainable to report the case criminally. An impartial physique, “temporary in nature” and shaped for the event, would set up the process to be adopted by these affected.

In his report, the Ombudsman calls for the collaboration of the Church in order that it “assumes the commitment to take charge of all or a substantial part of the compensation.” The bishops have already warned that they may refuse to collaborate and that they like to implement a unilateral reparation plan, even if dozens of victims are denouncing that the present mannequin of the Church is just not solely inadequate, however that it’s not truly being carried out. executing and denounce that the ecclesial hierarchy is just not repairing the harm brought on, they prolong the canonical processes of their circumstances, they don’t reply their emails and so they pressure them to signal confidentiality clauses. “It is time to take concrete measures,” Gabilondo insisted.

The Ombudsman has additionally pressured that if “the silence has been broken” it has been due to “the efforts of the victims” and the work of the media. Gabilondo has talked about the work of EL PAÍS, which in 2018 started an investigation into the clerical abuse scandal and which in 2021 brought on Congress to entrust de Gabilondo with writing the report he’s now presenting. After the fee, the group created two working teams that listened to 487 victims and picked up information to write down the examine.

The end result was devastating: 1.13% of the inhabitants residing in Spain – some 440,000 individuals, in keeping with this newspaper’s calculations – have suffered abuse within the spiritual sphere, in keeping with estimates from the large-scale survey commissioned to be included within the examine. The conclusions had been very important of the Spanish bishops and numerous spiritual orders, which in some circumstances didn’t even reply to the necessities of the Ombudsman’s fee. The doc additionally corroborated that the Church coated up a whole lot of circumstances whereas defending pedophiles.