"Then I could not bear that anyone touched me": the hidden ordeal of girls victims of abuse in the Church

Antònia Pallach Estela, 76, was five when, she says, a childish and innocent game turned into sexual abuse. Remember that in 1950 the Piarist priest Antón Batlle Huguet “had an original system”: “I would get up like an acrobat, horizontally, and when I did, I would put my hands through my panties”. Batlle Huguet, Antònia accuses, abused her on several occasions, each time they were alone in an apartment with his brother, who was a canon of the Tarragona Cathedral. With each touch he received a reward: “Then he went to a box shaped like a cross, with a lying baby Jesus. Inside were pine nuts and sugar dumplings, which I really liked. After touching, he had the right to pinions ”.Antònia is one of the 41 women who denounce sexual abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church when they were girls and adolescents in the report with 281 victims prepared by EL PAÍS. They represent 14.6% of those affected. All are being investigated by the Church after this newspaper handed it over to the Vatican and the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference, Cardinal Juan José Omella, at the beginning of the month. In total, these women accuse 36 members of the clergy, representing 14.3% of all those reported in the study (251). The Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE) has scorned the report and reproaches that an alleged lack of rigor "makes it difficult to draw conclusions that could be used for a possible investigation." EL PAÍS will from now on tell the stories of the people behind these cases.

In the case of Antònia, this newspaper communicated it to the Piarists of Catalonia last March and the order contacted her, apologized and opened an investigation. It concluded that "there is no reported case or any indication or suspicion about Batlle Huguet" and they referred the complaint to the Catalan Ombudsman, the Ombudsman of that community, to intervene as a mediator in a reparation process. This week the Catalan Ombudsman decided that he should receive 2,250 euros to pay for his therapy, but Antònia is outraged: “It's laughable. I have spent four times more to be able to be here telling it ”. She bore her trauma in silence for three decades, until one day the aftermath became noticeable: “When I got divorced, I saw that I couldn't bear to be touched by anyone. Something was uncovered, something terrible, at 42 years old.You carry it inside until it explodes ”. The Piarist that Antònia accuses, who died in 2004, worked for many years at the order's school in Vilanova i La Geltrú and was later sent to Cuba.

Antònia Pallach Estela, victim of sexual abuse by a Piarist priest when she was five years old.MASSIMILIANO MINOCRI

María Teresa Compte, president of Betania, an association for the reception and accompaniment of victims of sexual violence by the clergy, explains that it is common for women who have experienced this type of aggression to take time to assimilate that they suffered them. This is because, according to the expert, when we talk about abuse within the Church, we usually talk about child victims, not girls. The truth is that three of every 10 underage victims are girls, according to Compte points out in a study published in February this year. As the highest percentage of victims is male, "it has always been approached as an exclusively male issue", reasons the researcher. “But when the existence of girl victims is not recognized,adolescents and adult women, it is more difficult for them to recognize themselves and to be able to break the silence ”, he says. They end up in a loop that causes more silence. Compte warns that the figures are "indicative but partial", since, as determined, there is a lot of "hidden victimization".

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The Spanish Church faces a major investigation of pedophilia with 251 new cases contributed by EL PAÍS

The investigation of abuses in the Church that EL PAÍS began in 2018 has so far accounted for 602 cases - each one refers to an accused - and 1,237 victims since the 1930s. The accounting kept by this newspaper is the only one in Spain, given the absence of official data or that of the Church and the general lack of interest of the institutions in investigating this scourge. Of that number, 93 complaints belonged to women, which represents 15.1% of all cases. The religious orders involved include the Piarists, the Marists, the Augustinians, the Paulines, and the Viatores, among others. They affect several dioceses, among which are those of Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona. Among the perpetrators, priests, parish priests and teachers have been denounced.

Behind the numbers are the stories of many women. One of them is that of Kathryna Leshay, 60 years old. She relates that at the end of the sixties, at the Saint Dominique Institute in Madrid, run by French nuns, a Spanish priest confessed to her who closed the door, sat her on his knees, lifted her skirt and touched her genitals. "How is it possible to confess to an eight-year-old girl for her sins while you are reaching out to her?" Cries Kathryna, who remembers how in those moments she disconnected the mind from the body. Marta García, 54, was not abused at the San Agustín de Santander school, but she does assure that she witnessed them: "On numerous occasions I found one of the girls in my class in the arms of Father Juan." The Augustinians ask for forgiveness and claim to be willing to investigate all the cases reported to them,although they insist that to date no complaint has reached them.

I will always remember his psychopathic voice and the panic, disgust and shame that he made me feel

CV, victim of sexual abuse at age nine

Another case is that of CV, which narrates how a priest of the Piarists of Zaragoza “rubbed” her over her clothes while threatening her with telling “lies” about her to her parents and the nuns of her school so that they could suspend her or expelled.

Although almost 50 years have passed, CV assures: "I will always remember his psychopathic voice, and the panic, disgust and shame that he made me feel."

The Piarists, who ask for forgiveness and make themselves available to the victim, assure that their official policy is to investigate all cases, as long as they have sufficient information.

Difficulty giving and receiving affection

The sexual abuse suffered by the victims, be they women or men, derive in a series of physiological and emotional-affective consequences. In the case of them, however, this especially affects their identity as women: "Abuses deeply damage their maternal instincts", as Compte has verified in her experience as a companion. Furthermore, victims experience difficulties in having pleasurable and fulfilling sexual relations. All due to the inability to give or receive affection that usually derives from this type of violence.

Leonor García, 58, did not allow herself to be touched either. “Leo doesn't like being hugged,” she remembers her family always saying. In her case, she denounces that she was sexually abused by the priest who officiated Sunday mass at the Sanatorio Santa Marina in Bilbao. Leonor entered the children's ward of this center in January 1971, suffering from tuberculosis. He was eight years old. He assures that the clergyman, whose name he does not remember, masturbated while he confessed after mass. He adds that he also entered the rooms where the girls rested and "poked" their genitals. He maintains that he not only abused her, that there were 12 or 14 girls because on each side of the room there were six or seven beds. “Between us we talked about it and we had all suffered it. We thought it was a privilege, that he loved us very much ”, admits Leonor.“It was the only visit from outside that we had in the sanatorium, apart from the families. That's why we were so happy when he came, ”she recalls.

Leonor García shows a photograph of her father, her brothers and herself in the ward of the sanatorium for children with tuberculosis.Olmo Calvo

The priest continued to enter the pavilion during that spring and summer, continues Leonor's story. But little by little the girls realized that this was not normal. Until one day they decided to resist: “We agreed to put on the sheets very tight so that when he came he could not reach us. One of the caregivers asked us why we were like this, and we told her it was because the priest was coming. " After that, the defendant disappeared. Leonor reflects: “They cured me of that spot on my lung [she refers to tuberculosis], but they left me another one for life. And that, how do I manage it? EL PAÍS has transmitted this case to the diocese of Bilbao, which ensures that they have not received any complaint from the Santa Marina Sanatorium. They ask for “forgiveness for any case of abuse that may have occurred within the Church,even not having knowledge of it ”. However, disobeying the canonical rules that oblige them to open an investigation for any credible indication, they affirm that they will not do so until the victim contacts them.

Another case is that of Marina (not her real name), who claims to have suffered abuse at the age of 15. As she explains, priest B .G., From the San Vicente de Paúl parish in Cartagena (Murcia), abused her in 1997, while they were walking the Camino de Santiago: “He took me by the arm one night and began to kiss me. He took me to a place where no one saw us. He kissed me, touched me and asked me to touch him ”. After years of therapy, nightmares and difficulties in their relationships, Marina synthesizes: “Only those who go through a traumatic experience can know in their own body what it is to live dissociated, disconnected, and continuously relive feelings of disgust, freezing, and rejection in their present relationships, even though the years have passed. They are sensations that were recorded in the body and are triggered automatically ”.This medium has contacted the Paúles Fathers of the Province of Zaragoza, responsible for the Murcia area. A person in charge who has not wanted to identify himself has assured that they will not investigate the BG case: “We will not investigate it. I have never heard anyone speak ill of this person. I am not interested in the subject. This is dirty. "

The worst thing is that you end up believing that it is your fault

Isabel García, victim of sexual abuse at age 14

Abuses have lifelong consequences.

There is something that Isabel García, 45, cannot help but think: “From what could have been, to what I am”.

According to her, the Marist brother Carlos Osés abused her when she was 14. It was in a camp at the school of the Zaragoza order, in Isaba (Navarra).

Isabel injured her foot and had to miss out on excursions.

“The priest would go into my tent, at first more affectionate, to gain my trust.

He touched my legs, my back, my chest.

I was trying to flee or hide.

But one day he got in and zipped the store inside, "he says.

"I haven't gotten over it, and the worst thing is that you end up believing it's your fault."

According to Isabel García, at the camp it was learned that Osés also touched another girl and that he tried to cross over with a monitor. However, he assures that the Marists of Zaragoza “covered everything”: “One of the monitors asked my father and me to understand that it was the first time that girls went to the camp, who were not used to it. He also said that this brother was already famous and had been transferred to another school. " The Marists, who never called her, have opened an investigation, as confirmed to this newspaper. They also apologize to the victim, "for not having been able to protect, take care of her, and for not having adequately managed that situation," and they put themselves at his disposal. The congregation confirms that Carlos Osés continues to be a Marist brother of the Iberian Province,but they assure that they do not carry out any activity with minors.

A climate of misogyny and consensual harassment

EF, 50, studied at the Colegio San Viator in Madrid, from the Viatores, from first to third at BUP, at the end of the eighties. He was there from 14 to 17 years old: “I left because I couldn't take it anymore. The harassment by students and teachers, who were clerics, was brutal. You could be insulted, fondled and groped, with the approval of the adults, who did nothing about it ”. EF entered the center three years after it was coed, and she was one of the five or six girls in a class, out of about 45 students: "They didn't know how to treat us, they weren't used to us." She relates that her classmates touched "their ass and boobs", they put their hands in any corner, they yelled sows at them, they moaned when they saw them, they made holes in the walls of the changing rooms to observe them while they changed ...

In the middle of an exam, he pulled up my shirt and unbuttoned my bra, while he caressed the back of my neck and arms

EF, victim of sexual abuse between the ages of 14 and 17

But that was not the worst.

EF accuses three religious teachers of the center of harassment and abuse.

One is JM, nicknamed

"Because it was up to all of us." “He was a priest who gave us religion. In the middle of an exam, he pulled up my shirt and unbuttoned my bra, while stroking the back of my neck and arms. All in front of my colleagues, who laughed out loud ”. Another defendant is SF (deceased), who was a professor of Biology: “He allegedly fell in love with you and sent you letters of special friendship. In a cleaning I found several of them. Out of context and from the eyes of an adult woman, I was frozen by what they put. We are talking about a 35-year-old man and a 14 ″ girl. Finally, he points to a third, Santiago Fernández, who taught Mathematics: “He was the worst. He was a sadist and a misogynist. He urged us to be despised and ignored for being girls and, meanwhile, he hooked up every year with the most popular or beautiful girl in the class.He literally had students with whom he went hand in hand, hooked up at parties, slept with them ”.

Fernández, who had been at the Viator College in Valladolid, returned years later to this city and was rector of the Miguel de Cervantes European University, where he starred in a notorious scandal: he was denounced for sexual abuse by his secretary and had to resign in 2003. He was sentenced in 2005 to a fine of 16,000 euros for a continuing crime of sexual abuse. In the trial, precisely, a student from the San Viator school in Madrid, GRV, testified that she accused him of touching and harassing the students in 1995, when she was 16 years old. He testified for 50 minutes, as reflected then by the local press. She narrated how, for not giving in to her harassment, Fernández suspended her for the entire course of her Physics course, while she obtained A's in the rest of the subjects. He assured that he informed the management of the center.Upon seeing the news of the Valladolid trial in the newspapers, he contacted the complainant to lend her support.

The judgment of the case later indicated that several testimonies coincided in “the attitude and conduct of the accused with other women in the environment of the University or of his teaching career, relative to innuendo, hints or comments about inappropriate sexual aspects, hugs, touching ”. However, he was not disqualified from teaching and later became a teacher at an institute in a town in León. The local press from Valladolid detailed that before he had also passed through the Fray Luis de León de los Reparadores school, in Madrid, and another center in San Viator, the San José de Basauri, Bizkaia.

This newspaper has contacted the Viatores, who say they know only one case of sexual abuse by members of their congregation, the notorious José Ángel Arregui Eraña scandal, which was uncovered in 2010. The order's lawyer assures that they will investigate the case However, according to her, the entire school, including the teachers, were aware of what was happening there: “It was so scandalous that a senior official from the Vitoria congregation of Viatores came to put order.

But everything remained the same ”.

If you know of any case of sexual abuse that has not seen the light of day, write to us with your complaint at