La Salle's order is reluctant to obey Pope Francis' directives and canonically investigate cases of pedophilia committed by its members in the past. It is one of the few, unlike others, such as Salesians or Marists, that still refuses to open an investigation of the complaints that concern it in the report that this newspaper delivered at the beginning of December to the Vatican and Cardinal Juan José Omella, President of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE). In any case, the investigation of the 251 cases in the dossier is already underway and if the order does not collaborate, it will be the Vatican, through the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, its disciplinary body, which is responsible for compliance with the law. The study featured 17 de La Salle brothers accused of abusing at least 19 victims in 19 centers of the order throughout Spain.If they are added to the cases that were already known, the figure rises to 26 defendants and at least 60 victims in 27 of the 115 schools that the order has in Spain. That is, in 23% of the centers of this order there are accusations of pedophilia.
In response to this newspaper, the order explains: “We believe that it is not appropriate to open an internal investigation into these allegations. We do not have the authority to do so, although we are open to welcoming the victims and giving them our support ”. The congregation says that if it receives a tip about abuse, it tracks down signs of crime and verifies if the information is true. Then, he delivers them to the competent civil authority. It is a dead end measure, as almost all cases are prescribed and the judges simply close them. But in addition, in this way the order disobeys the Pope and his instructions on how to address the abuses, which affect all institutes of consecrated life or societies of apostolic life, including La Salle, despite its peculiarity of being a congregation of laity.An investigation must always be opened and reported to Rome. The rules of the Vatican's reference vademecum on pedophilia are clear: the
notitia de
delicto
is “all information about a possible crime that reaches the Ordinary or the Hierarch in any way.
It does not have to be a formal complaint ”(article 9) and even without precise data it must be studied and a prior investigation opened (articles 13 and 16).
Despite this, La Salle insists: "We understand that we comply with what Canon Law requires us to do."
For its part, the EEC on 20 October disdained the EL PAÍS report for an alleged lack of rigor that "makes it difficult to draw conclusions that could be used for a possible investigation."
Since then, this newspaper has been describing these cases: these are the stories of eleven of the people who are behind these complaints in La Salle centers.
The first story concerns a senior La Salle official, NFP, accused of abuse at the La Salle Institution in Madrid in the 1990s. He also had responsibilities during that decade in the management of Catholic Schools and was a regular advisor to the State School Council. In 2004, he held positions in ARLEP (Lasallian Association of Spain and Portugal) and was responsible for all the educational centers of the order in these countries. And he was linked to
scouts
during his time in the Canary Islands, at the La Verdellada school (La Laguna, Tenerife), throughout the eighties.
In this case, La Salle has already refused to follow canonical norms. In February 2020, he received an anonymous complaint against this brother in his email. It was from a person who had also written to EL PAÍS. The congregation went to the Prosecutor's Office, which filed the case by prescription. So the deadline for this to happen was only three years from the age of majority, according to the car to which EL PAÍS has had access. The order did not open an ecclesiastical process, although it was obliged to do so. This newspaper has subsequently collected two more testimonies against this person.
The first former student, Jaime T., denounced that this religious man subjected him to touching up to two times in the course of 1992 to 1993, in the eighth grade of EGB, at the La Salle Institution in Madrid. I was 15 years old. He never said anything until 25 years later, when "out of fear that he would continue to abuse," he denounced the NFP at the Unit for Attention to Family and Women (UAFM) of the Police. Weeks later, the agents informed him that the crime had prescribed. Then he decided to write to EL PAÍS. According to his story, in Religion class this teacher proposed to prepare a song for the end-of-year performance. “I suggested that I take a tape of The Inhumans that my brother had to class and rehearse at school. He told me to take it to his office the next day. When I went,He asked me to come over to his chair and began to touch me above my pants. I was paralyzed, ”says the complainant. He claims that the scene was repeated once more, on one occasion when the defendant asked him to help him retrieve material from a school room. “There, face to face, he again grabbed my private parts over my pants. So, I looked at him with the face of: 'What the hell are you doing?' and I left ”, he says.
Another colleague of Jaime T., who prefers not to give his name, affirms that he also suffered abuse from this brother several times. “At that time I knew a lot about computers and I used to do it a lot. One day, when he left school, he called me to go to a center that the order had [in Madrid] to fix some computers. When I went he touched my parts and I felt very uncomfortable, "he says. This former student affirms that his conduct was
common knowledge.
After the publication of the EL PAÍS report delivered to the Church, another former student contacted this newspaper to report that the school had sent a circular referring to the case and reported that the crime had already been dismissed by the Prosecutor's Office. "I was very angry, it seemed that they were defending their innocence," he says. This former student says that it was common for the accused to take the children to his office to touch them: “He would line us up and, as if it were a game, he would rub our genitals. On one occasion, during the course of '94, he shut himself up with a friend, locked the door, and stroked his crotch. He has had a very bad time ”.
In a telephone conversation with this newspaper, the accused denied the facts, although he said that three years ago he received an email from another alleged victim accusing him of a similar crime.
He claims that he did not inform the order nor did he attempt to contact the sender.
"I did not give it importance and there were practically no more [complaints]," says the defendant, who manifests being surprised.
“I am an accepted and loved person.
I don't know what's behind [this complaint].
In the world of education, sometimes, there are resentful people.
I have seen other cases for suspense issues and they set you up with a candle when there really is absolutely nothing ”, he assures.
Antonio Pérez de Lucas, former student of a La Salle school in Madrid, Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas, in which he claims to have suffered abuse when he was a minor Santi Burgos
It's not the only one
case of La Salle de Madrid.
There is another at the Nuestra Señora de las Maravillas school (known for the 130-year prison sentence of former religious Pedro Antonio Ramos Lominchar, for abusing 14 minors and four adults between 2013 and 2016).
A new accusation points to Brother Feliciano.
Former student Antonio Pérez de Lucas, now 67 years old, accuses him of having abused him in 1964. It was on a school trip.
“When we were alone, he took me to the back of the bus and told me he had to touch my sex, to check if everything was okay, as he was entering puberty.
I thought the brother was in good faith, of course.
He began to touch me without stopping talking about how important what he was doing was, ”he says.
Two years later, he says, this teacher left school.
"Why didn't the rest of the religious do anything?"
Some stories are decades old, and they also affect women. One of the oldest cases is that of Pere Armengol i Vallverdú, a former La Salle brother accused of abuse in the 1950s. Antònia Pallach says that in 1957, when she was 12 or 13 years old, she suffered harassment and abuse in Tarragona. “They had thrown him out of the order. He had married a relative. He tried several times to abuse me, but I did not let myself. He managed to kiss me for a long time on the mouth, I was suffocating ”. La Salle reports that this religious had left the congregation in the 1930s, but has not given any further information. In the case of another woman who does not want to identify herself, the accused is from her own family, her uncle GE “My mother was left a widow, he always visited us and we found him disgusting without knowing why.One day he suggested to my mother that he invite two of us to spend a summer at the Alcora school (Castellón), where he was a teacher. My mother sent my sister and my brother. In adolescence my sister told my mother that my uncle abused her. My sister explained that after abusing her she told her: 'This is what your father would have done to you.' Upon returning them home, he had the audacity to bill my mother for expenses, including a taxi. Nothing was ever done and my uncle died of old age. Five years ago my sister committed suicide ”.He had the audacity to bill my mother for expenses, including a taxi. Nothing was ever done and my uncle died of old age. Five years ago my sister committed suicide ”.He had the audacity to bill my mother for expenses, including a taxi. Nothing was ever done and my uncle died of old age. Five years ago my sister committed suicide ”.
Juanjo Sendra, a former student of the La Salle school in Paterna, Valencia, who accuses brother Félix Benedico Hernández of sexual abuse when he was a minor.Mònica Torres
Juanjo Sendra, 54, says that between the ages of 8 and 10 he was sexually assaulted by brother Félix Benedico Hernández, founder of the
scout group
from the La Salle de Paterna school (Valencia), where Sendra was an intern. He says he abused him at night. Benedico was in charge of guarding the bedrooms. “He would come to my bed when he thought I was asleep, he would uncover me very carefully and pull down my pajamas, revealing my buttocks. Afterward, he would sit on a chair and calmly masturbate. I wasn't looking, but I knew exactly what I was doing. I heard him getting excited, I heard him panting, "he says. During those moments, Sendra affirms that he pretended to sleep, "horrified", for fear of the physical beatings that they were given daily in the center. "When I reached orgasm, very carefully, I would put my clothes back up, cover myself with my sheets and blankets and leave as if nothing had happened," he emphasizes. Benedico, now deceased,In May 2017, he received a plaque from the alumni association in recognition of "his dedication and dedication to his students, in accordance with Lasallian values," according to the program of the event that was made public on the internet.
Brother Félix Benedico Hernández, founder of the scout group of the La Salle de Paterna school (Valencia), accused of abuse.
In the Basque Country, brother SGS is accused of abusing at least three boys in two centers. A former student who does not want to reveal his name points it out at the Beasain school (Gipuzkoa), of which SGS was director from 1967 to 1971. He was nine years old in 1971, and the priest, he says, abused him for 12 months. "On many occasions, some of them with another child," he describes. There is something he cannot overcome: “When I was abused, the older students would pound on the door to make him leave me alone. If they shouted and made noise, why didn't the rest of the religious do anything? " At the end of the seventies, when he was 11 years old, his parents sent him to the boarding school of another order, the Corazonistas, in Vitoria: “There I allied myself with the strongest children with the fear that some friar would notice me. I was lucky and nothing happened to me.Which cannot be said of other children, since there was also another pedophile friar who abused the weakest, they called him
The Champi
.
He was the hall attendant and since the doors could not be closed, he went into the rooms of the little ones, aged 12 and 13 at night.
I know their names.
There was a complaint and he disappeared, he was transferred to San Sebastián ”.
More information
Sexual abuse Catholic Church
As for SGS, de Beasain became director of the La Salle Aspirancy in Irún (Gipuzkoa), until 1976. There, between 1973 and 1974, former student MGS, who is now 63 years old, recounted what “personal interviews” were like. that the religious periodically had with the aspirants to become members of the order, boys between 13 and 16 years old. They lasted an hour and a half and this student remembers that he behaved completely abnormally. "It was not normal the way he hugged you and kissed your face as soon as he entered, or that he was half hugging you, or that he spoke to you with his mouth close to your face, in whispers." But then he went further, according to the accounts of his companions. “The director talked to them about whether they masturbated and that this was a very serious problem and they needed help to overcome it. And so he persuaded them to undress,they gave thanks to God for their organs and in some cases he even convinced them to do it there and then repent. I had not started masturbating yet and I was able to escape. In the end the topic of phimosis occurred to him. He told me that he had to guide me on whether I should have surgery or not and I should undress in front of him and put my penis erect to see if the glans would come out or not. I perfectly remember his voice, his agitated breathing, his look with those glass ass glasses, his hugs and kisses on the face when he said goodbye. 47 years have passed and it seems like today standing there naked, sitting next to him, watching him move my penis until it became erect. You don't know the number of hundreds of kids who passed through his hands ”.
According to the SGS obituary that the order published in 2020 when he died, he left the Basque Country for Madrid for a year.
He returned to San Sebastián in 1977, in whose communities he was an “animator” until 2015, when he joined the community of the Sagrada Familia de Irún, where he lived for the last six years.
Jesús Mallol, who denounces abuse when he was a minor by brother José Lantarón, a teacher at the La Salle school in Córdoba.Juan Carlos Toro
"I became invisible and suspended everything"
Jesús Mallol, 68, affirms that Brother José Lantarón, a mathematics teacher and secretary at the La Salle school in Córdoba, was well known among the students. “For taking a student to the blackboard every day, generally an intern, who, with the excuse of clarifying his mistakes in a problem, shamelessly reached out for 15 or 20 minutes in front of the others,” describes Mallol, who was one of its victims. Many students passed
through the hands of Lantarón, nicknamed
La Pepa
, he says. “It was very common to see someone crying and saying that they would tell their parents, but it continued as if nothing had happened. I mentioned it many times to my mother, but the answer used to be that she did not speak like that about brother José, ”he laments.
One autumn morning in 1965, Mallol could not bear the touching. "He took me to the blackboard and began the usual sovereign, but that day, in addition, he lowered his hand and put it through my shorts until he touched my genitals," he says. He left school "with tears of helplessness and rage." He told his uncle, who "had a violent quarrel with the director and the prefect," as he recalls. He went back to class the next day. "I became invisible and suspended everything, I had always been pretty good," he adds. His mother sent a letter denouncing the events to the Bishop of Córdoba, who was Manuel Fernández-Conde. According to Mallol, there was no reply. Later, he dropped out of school. "For
La Pepa
, the punishment was a transfer to the La Salle school in Tenerife," he concludes.
Brother Macario Villarroel, third from the right in the second row, in an image from the 1967-1968 school year at the Montemolín de La Salle school in Zaragoza.
Jorge Gastón recounts abuses at the Montemolín school in Zaragoza, where he studied from 1965 to 1969. “I came from Madrid, from a normal secular school, and that impressed me a lot, the beatings were continuous, it was an atmosphere of terror. The priest who abused us was Brother Macario Villarroel, professor of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. He arrived in 1967, came from another school, and left around 1972 or 1973. He was a true predator. Everybody knew what he was doing. First it would shake a lot, to tenderize the meat. He said: 'How do you have to do things? With order and cleanliness! ' And he began to shake. Then it was your turn, in the middle of class. He approached your ear to suck you, ran his hands over your chest, licked you. He was beside himself. Only in my year we were about 90, in two groups, A and B, and he went for everyone.The worst thing that could happen to you was to be left alone at recess and for him to find you. With some he was fixated. One one day he did not let himself go and he reared up, punched him in the stomach and fell round. The next day he didn't come back, his parents took him away ”.
If you know of any case of sexual abuse that has not seen the light of day, write to us with your complaint at
abusos@elpais.es
.
