A third report of pedophilia in the clergy with 50 new cases brings to 500 the clergy accused in a single year

EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has an updated

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The Spanish Church will add to its investigation of pedophilia in the clergy a third report from EL PAÍS, delivered to the president of the Episcopal Conference (CEE) and the Ombudsman, which includes 79 testimonies accusing 70 priests, religious and lay people of religious institutions, of which 50 names were unknown until now.

The dossier counts 103 victims.

In this way, the total number of cases collected, investigated and delivered by this newspaper amounts to 500 in a period of one year, by adding this third study to those presented in December 2021 and June 2022, also presented to the Vatican.

In total, the three add up to more than 1,000 pages.

It is a dizzying increase that has doubled the number of known cases in Spain in 12 months: now there are 906, with 1,713 victims, from the 1940s to the present.

And only four years ago, when this newspaper began its investigation, there were only 34. Theoretically, it was a problem that did not exist in the Spanish Church.

In reality, this newspaper has used the most restrictive criteria to count the victims, only by direct testimonies, but they can be thousands, because in dozens of cases the complainants speak of aggressors who spent years in schools or seminaries.

The figures that are known come from the accounts kept by EL PAÍS, the only one existing in the absence of official or ecclesiastical data, with an open database that brings together all the cases that have come out through the media or court rulings.

In just one year, the Spanish ecclesial hierarchy has had to deal with more complaints than in the entire 20th century and the current one.

Nevertheless,

Upon learning of any news of abuse, the Catholic Church is obliged by canonical norms to open an investigation into each case, although it is a fragmented and unpredictable task: each affected diocese and order investigates themselves and confronts it on their own. according to their different criteria and sensitivities.

As on previous occasions, this newspaper has protected the identity of the complainants in the report, but it has made itself available to the Church to facilitate contact with them whenever they wish, and so that they can collaborate in the investigation.

However, the attitude of the ecclesiastical authorities, who have never wanted to reveal the cases they are aware of, offers little credibility for the majority of the victims.

Even many of those who have agreed to collaborate in many cases have been disappointed by the treatment received and the lack of willingness to investigate.

The novelty, since July, is that there is already an institutional alternative, the commission of investigation of the Ombudsman, which has collected more than 400 testimonies.

This initiative was approved by Congress in March, following the impact of the first EL PAÍS report.

The Church also reacted for the first time and commissioned an audit of a Madrid law firm in February.

He also went from saying for years that there were “very few cases” to suddenly admitting 506 complaints in March.

which has collected more than 400 testimonials.

This initiative was approved by Congress in March, following the impact of the first EL PAÍS report.

The Church also reacted for the first time and commissioned an audit of a Madrid law firm in February.

He also went from saying for years that there were “very few cases” to suddenly admitting 506 complaints in March.

which has collected more than 400 testimonials.

This initiative was approved by Congress in March, following the impact of the first EL PAÍS report.

The Church also reacted for the first time and commissioned an audit of a Madrid law firm in February.

He also went from saying for years that there were “very few cases” to suddenly admitting 506 complaints in March.

In this third report, the type of abuse ranges from touching above the clothing to continuous rape over time.

The ages range from four to 17 years, although the most common average is from 10 to 14. In most cases (96.68%), the victims are men.

The oldest case is from 1955 and the most recent, from 2002. For decades, six cases are from the fifties, 17 from the sixties, 25 from the seventies, 12 from the eighties, seven from the nineties and only two correspond to the new century.

All have prescribed before criminal justice.

80% belongs to religious orders.

The remaining 14 cases point to clergy from 12 dioceses: Ciudad Real, Zaragoza, Tarazona, Tenerife, Teruel, Zamora, Plasencia, Ourense, Orihuela-Alicante, Málaga, Barcelona and Jaén.

Suso Valeiras, 65, is one of the victims who wrote to EL PAÍS in June, days after the bishops received the second report.

She found out through the radio about the existence of the newspaper email where she could write to tell her story.

She did not hesitate: “I am telling my case so that it counts as one more and so that more people are encouraged to tell if they suffered abuse.

Spain needs a massive complaint for things to change once and for all."

The story he recounts occurred during the summer of 1970 in his town, Carballino, in Ourense.

He was 12 years old and that year the failed subjects piled up.

To remedy his bad grades, an uncle of his who was a priest introduced the family to a friar friend who was spending vacations in the town to give him private lessons.

"I do not remember the name.

He was not from the town

but I was going to spend the summer with him.

He was in a kind of boarding house, where I went to him to give me Latin and French classes.

I don't know how, but the first day he took me to the room, closed the door, took off his habit and hung it on the door.

I got half naked and he masturbated on top of me.

I remember that afterwards he constantly repeated to me: 'Don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone…', he narrates.

But Valeiras ignored him.

When he got home he told his mother: “I didn't understand seriousness, I think if he had understood he wouldn't have told it.

I know my parents went to the police and reported it."

He says that he remembers that a few days later he went to the bus station to look at the schedules.

“I found him sitting on a bench with two men.

I think it would be two people who took him into custody.

He looked at me with anger and anger.

I got scared and ran away, ”he explains.

Years later, his older sister told her that the bishop of Ourense, who was then Ángel Temiño Sáiz, appeared at her house to ask her parents to withdraw the complaint.

“He told them, my sister who was there tells me, that he would make sure that the friar paid for what he did to me.

And my parents withdrew the complaint."

says Valeiras.

This newspaper has tried unsuccessfully to obtain the diocese's version.

The cover-up that this victim points out is another of the realities that reappears in this third report.

At least 26 church officials are accused of covering up abuses in this dossier, and four of them were bishops.

EL PAÍS has already published this summer a list of 39 Spanish bishops suspected of covering up or silencing cases of abuse, but the Church has not shown any reaction and has had no consequences.

Suso Valeiras, who denounces sexual abuse by a friar in Ourense in 1970, when he was a child, in front of the door of a church in Asturias.

paco walls

Until the delivery of this third dossier, there was only one Spanish province that did not register any cases: Guadalajara.

This is the reason why Vicente Carrasco wrote to EL PAÍS.

“When I read that it was the only site where there were no abuses by the Church, I didn't think twice and sent an email.

Between 1982 and 1984, at the Marist school in Guadalajara, Antonio Tejedor Mingo played for the children during pre-technology classes”, he recounts.

The students nicknamed him El Walrus, because of his big mustache.

Carrasco, who was not abused, affirms that he saw this Marist put his hands under the tracksuits of at least 15 students between the ages of 12 and 14, whom he can list by name and surname.

According to his testimony, El Walrus, who also taught religion and gymnastics,

He sat behind his desk in the classroom and when the students came to ask him something, he put his hand behind his pants.

“One time I even had one on each side, both hands reaching into the pants of two teenagers.

I remember all this because they would not be more than four meters from me.

I have been silent since 1982 because nothing happened to me, that monster did not reach out to me, but I saw it day in and day out, ”she says.

One of those boys that Carrasco talks about is Bautista (fictitious name), who has also contacted this newspaper.

“I was one of the children that Antonio Tejedor Mingo,

, he would put his hand inside their shirts during classes.

She did it in front of everyone, she didn't hide.

We were always the ones with the most boyish aspect.

He did it while he walked between the desks and explained something during his pre-technology classes.

I don't know if he did more serious things in private ”, describes this former student, who affirms that the touching did not cause him any trauma.

“Now you see it and you know that it was not correct.

I have heard stories from classmates who claimed that other students had a worse time.

I'm telling this because maybe he can help someone who had a worse time than me, ”he concludes.

Another former student who prefers to remain anonymous also speaks about what Tejedor did with other students in private.

According to his account, the defendant had an office next to the exit door to the patios,

with a wooden door with a frosted glass.

One day, during the course of 1978, she went to ask him for a ball to play soccer “I went to the door and knocked on it with my knuckles.

The Walrus replied very nervously from within: 'Wait, wait a minute.'

He undid the bolt and a student ran out of the door opening pulling up his sweatpants.

When I entered, the teacher was also adjusting his sweatpants, ”he describes.

Vicente Carrasco, witness who accuses the religious Antonio Tejedor, alias El Walrus, of abusing at least 15 students from the Marist school in Guadalajara between 1982 and 1984. / UNAI ARANZADI

Carrasco says that he wrote to the order months ago to investigate what happened.

A Marist, “in charge of managing issues of abuse”, suggested that he meet in person to ask for his forgiveness.

“I don't need to be asked for forgiveness, I'm not a victim.

I want them to investigate,” says Vicente.

In September he contacted the order again to be informed about what they had found out in the investigation.

The answer was that they needed a victim to contact them to start the investigation.

He also promised to write to the victims he knew asking them to report his case to the Marists.

"They did not want to tell me if El Morsa was still active or had been removed," says Carrasco.

Tejedor currently holds the position of delegate of SED, a religious charitable NGO linked to the Marist order.

The case of Mercedes Chiva, a neighbor of Rubí, Barcelona, ​​who lost her father as a child, is another pattern that is repeated: the priest who becomes a friend of the family and enters the house.

In this case, literally, because she started by going to eat, then she stayed the night, traveled with them and used her car.

“In the end, she almost lived with us,” says Chiva.

“She acted as a father to me and my two brothers.

She hit us and yelled at us ”.

This priest was a Jesuit, Roberto Pascual Martín, and Chiva denounces that he abused her from the age of 13 to 14, in 1976. He also did it with her cousin, he assures.

He was the director of the Nuestra Señora de Montserrat de Rubí school and directed the parish of San Félix, in the El Pinar neighborhood.

The Jesuit Roberto Pascual Martín, accused of child abuse in Rubí, Barcelona, ​​in an image taken in this town around 1977.

“The touching began in the eighth grade of EGB, at my house.

She would say, 'Let's go over the lesson.'

She would come to my room and close the door.

She would sit next to me and start touching me.

I was anguished because I did not know how far that hand could reach.

It was horrible to study with her mouth next to me”.

He remembers that he gave him everything, "he took me to the English Court and he bought me what he wanted".

At the age of 14, one day she told him: "Don't do this to me anymore."

And it was not repeated.

But then another long story begins of asking for help in the Church and receiving only indifference and cover-up from the accused.

Around 1980, at the age of 18, he told it in confession to Father Joaquín Rius, parish priest of San Pere, in Rubí.

"He got angry.

I don't know what he did, but the priest was transferred immediately, I think to a Jesuit center in Tarragona.

I guess he kept in contact with minors ”.

The Jesuits assure that they were not aware of any complaint against Roberto Pascual Martín.

In 2005, when she wanted to request the annulment of her marriage, she recounted the abuses to the nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Urgell, with whom she was very friendly, and they immediately informed the Bishop of Gerona, Carles Soler Perdigó, who sent it to the ecclesiastical court, in Barcelona.

“I met with the judicial vicar, Xavier Bastida.

He didn't tell me anything.

Then she didn't tell me anything either.

I don't know if she did anything."

In 2010 he denounced it to the Mossos d'Esquadra: “They informed me that he had prescribed, and they did nothing, as far as I know”.

In 2022, after reading reports of abuse cases in EL PAÍS, he contacted the Jesuits.

She is grateful for the support that the order has given her, which has paid for her access to therapy, and she says she has felt "welcomed and understood."

“I asked for three things: that my attacker not exercise, that he not be in contact with minors and a letter of apology from him.

They told me they've sent him to a Jesuit house in Sant Cugat, but I've been waiting for eight months and he hasn't even apologized.

And I don't ask for anything else, I'm not looking for money.

That letter is the peace that I need.

And I don't know what process they are following, he should get a reprimand, let him know why he is being transferred, not because he is older and diabetic.

The Society of Jesus explains that restorative justice processes are slow,

but they are still working on it and are available to all victims.

Mercedes Chiva concludes: “I want the truth to be known.

I need this to have a full stop, it's like it's haunting me.

I need justice.

These crimes cannot prescribe.

They steal our souls, they kill people.

And then they say you should have said it, or you're making it up.

Most of the people I've told it to have never spoken to me again."

07:19

One year after the EL PAÍS report that uncovered pedophilia in the Catholic Church

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

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