A victim of abuse denounces the leadership of the Society of Jesus in Chile for covering up her case

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

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A victim of sexual abuse has denounced seven provincials of the Society of Jesus in the South American country and a dozen Chilean members of the order in the Chilean justice system, through canonical channels, in the bishopric of Tarragona, where he now resides. either for having covered up the abuses he suffered in his childhood, already admitted and condemned by the Church, or for not wanting to later investigate this concealment of the crime.

She also went to the Chilean courts in 2021, where the cover-up investigation is still open, while she did so a month ago to the Catalan diocese, which has forwarded the complaint to the Vatican Secretariat of State.

A week ago she also brought her case before the Ombudsman's commission.

David, fictitious name of the victim,

suffered abuse in a school of the order in the Chilean town of Osorno, between 1982 and 1995, at the hands of the Jesuit Juan Miguel Leturia, who died in 2011. He also accuses two archbishops of Santiago de Chile, emeritus cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz Ossa, and the one who is currently in office, the Spanish cardinal Celestino Aós Braco, for having ignored their denunciations so that the concealers could be investigated.

In total, he points to 21 people for having looked the other way for years and ignoring their demands for justice.

of having ignored their denunciations so that the concealers would be investigated.

In total, he points to 21 people for having looked the other way for years and ignoring their demands for justice.

of having ignored their denunciations so that the concealers would be investigated.

In total, he points to 21 people for having looked the other way for years and ignoring their demands for justice.

The Chilean Church already sentenced Juan Miguel Leturia in 2006, after this victim's complaint, but it did so in secret, without informing him of anything.

The penalty was removing the priest from contact with minors and from giving mass for three years, but he did not judge the cover-up of the facts by those who knew of his abuse.

And more than 15 years later he continues without doing so, a time in which various ecclesiastical officials, affirms this affected person, have continued to ignore his complaints and respond to him with evasions.

Like other neglected victims, he feels that no one in the Church has ever really bothered to listen to him, or to delve into the full truth of the case, and he hopes that now Pope Francis will do so.

Guillermo Baranda, current provincial of the Jesuits in Chile, told EL PAÍS that the facts denounced by David were investigated and a sentence was imposed on Leturia, which he served until his death.

"The case is canonically finished in all ecclesial instances," he says.

Regarding the cover-up and the list of people now denounced by David, he explains that "the Society of Jesus will not make decisions on the matter" until the Chilean justice system pronounces itself, since "it is the competent entity."

David feels that they have been making him dizzy for years and hiding the truth from him.

To begin with, it was not until 2010 that he learned of the outcome of the canonical process and discovered that those responsible for the cover-up had not been investigated or punished.

And it was because, after going to live in Spain, he went to the archdiocese of Barcelona to ask for help so that they could tell him what had happened with his complaint.

After several procedures, the Vatican forced the Jesuits to inform him and only then did he learn that they had limited himself to a light penalty for his attacker.

In 2019, encouraged by the wave of complaints of abuses against the Church in Spain, he decided to return to ask for justice and, again through the diocese of Barcelona, ​​filed a canonical complaint for cover-up, but the Vatican responded that his accusations they were “vague”.

That is why he has denounced it again with a more detailed account that he hopes will allow his case to be reopened, as has recently happened in Spain with that of the Biscayne school of Gaztelueta, of Opus Dei, which the Pope has ordered to investigate again, dissatisfied with how it was handled. boarded the first time.

David believes that religious authorities have "repeatedly corrupted" investigations into his abuser.

The complaint accuses the last seven provincials of the order in Chile: mainly Juan Ochagavía and Guillermo Baranda, but also Fernando Montes, Eugenio Valenzuela —who in 2019 submitted his resignation as a priest for being accused of sexual abuse—, Christian Brahm, Christian del Campo and Gabriel Roblero, the latter currently in office.

Along with them, priests and rectors of the school and other ecclesiastical officials.

David is one of the more than a thousand people who have written to EL PAÍS to report his case.

He did it in 2020, in the middle of the pandemic.

The abuses, he assures him, began in 1988, when he was 13 years old and was studying at the San Mateo school of the Society of Jesus in Osorno.

Leturia had been director of the center for several months and periodically began to take this student and a classmate to the rectory.

"He told us that we were his chosen ones," says the complainant.

During those visits, he recounts, Leturia abused them.

“After those meetings, he passed me through the corridors with Jesuit priests from the community, who later held the posts of rector”, he recounts.

He assures that they had to know what was happening.

Specifically, he points to Thomas Gavin and Alejandro Pizarro Bermúdez, Jesuits who years later held the position of rector of the school.

Leturia temporarily left the center at the end of that course, in 1988, according to those responsible due to "a strong depression," adds David.

Shortly thereafter, in 1990, he began writing letters to the victim, who was then 15 years old, and sporadically traveled from her new destination, Santiago de Chile, to visit him.

During those meetings, according to the complaint, the pedophile continued to abuse both David and other students.

“By then, the abuse of students was already

The superiors of the order knew it."

In 1995, the complainant traveled to Santiago de Chile and met Leturia to go to a swimming pool in the city.

Later, at the Jesuit school where he was staying, Leturia abused him again.

“He told me: 'Son, I love you.

This is fatherly love”, says David.

A decade after having suffered the abuses, in 2005, and already living in Spain, the victim wrote two letters to the then provincial of the congregation, Guillermo Baranda, where he recounted both the attacks and the names of those who, according to him, covered up for leturia.

“After receiving a very concise response from Baranda, he informed me that he would receive a second letter once the facts were investigated.

Obviously, it never came," says the victim, who soon hired a lawyer to contact the order directly.

Through another lawyer, says David, the Jesuits offered him "an agreed solution": the payment of compensation in exchange for retracting the accusations.

“I didn't accept it,” says David.

Shortly after, he denounced the abuser in the Chilean courts, but the authorities decided to archive it "due to lack of evidence."

Several children enter the San Mateo school of the Society of Jesus in Osorio (Chile).

He also sent letters with his complaint to various Church authorities, one of them to Cardinal Francisco Javier Errázuriz, then Archbishop of Santiago de Chile.

“We received a response from the archdiocese indicating that some steps would be taken, without specifying anything in particular.

I never had any news of them ”, laments the affected person.

Errázuriz was charged in 2019 by the Chilean justice for covering up Chilean clergy priests who abused minors.

The prelate denied the accusations.

This newspaper has unsuccessfully tried to contact the Archdiocese of Santiago to find out his version.

The victim says that the order instigated him

Since then, David describes indignantly, the Jesuits have not stopped instigating him.

“They even did it through the media, talking about how he was a person who only wanted money and to discredit the Jesuits.

That affected me a lot, ”he says.

The Company finally opened a canonical investigation against Leturia, but did not inform the victim of it, so he did not make a statement during the process, as required by canon law.

In addition, they forced a Jesuit friend of the victim —currently retired— to write a document against him to send, with the sentence, to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome.

In that text he accused David of being "a psychologically unbalanced and emotionally unstable person."

EL PAÍS has contacted said ex-religious man and corroborates that version.

Leturia was canonically sentenced in 2006 to a sentence that included psychotherapeutic treatment.

“All the sentences imposed were not carried out and Leturia, who enjoyed complete freedom of movement, continued abusing street children or children at serious social risk,” says David.

No member of the order was tried for covering up, hiding or silencing the abuses, despite the fact that they were listed as such in the victim's account.

"The main instigators of the crimes of concealment and procedural fraud were the Jesuit superiors Guillermo Baranda and Juan Ochagavía, who still continue to exercise the priesthood with impunity," he accuses.

The pedophile died on December 22, 2011. At the funeral, Provincial Valenzuela defined Leturia as "a man who did a lot of good, which we want to celebrate, and at the same time a wounded man, who made mistakes."

“The cover-up is the Achilles heel of the Church”

For David, the last decade has been marked by a relentless search for justice and answers.

After the 2019 complaint filed in the ecclesiastical court of Barcelona against the order for committing irregularities during the canonical process, the Vatican replied in a letter, in May 2020, that the text of his statement was "quite generic and vague" and that it did not allow “a truth check”.

It was like a bucket of cold water, but he didn't give up.

He contacted the order again to claim the documentation on the canonical process and request that the case be reopened.

But they did nothing.

Only the order agreed in December 2020, in an out-of-court agreement, to acknowledge "both publicly and privately that the facts denounced are true in their entirety",

but "expressly excluding responsibility for the crime of concealment," says the person affected.

A year later, already in 2021, he asked the current archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Cardinal Aós Braco, for help.

He exchanged emails, but the situation, he says, did not improve.

"What they have done has been to hinder the canonical and civil process in Chile," argues the victim.

David thinks this may be his last attempt to seek justice, but he doubts he can get anything.

“The cover-up is the Achilles heel of the Church, but especially of the Jesuits, who enjoy vast power.

They don't want to face that,” he says.

This time, he appeals directly to the Pope: "I beg the Holy Father Francis to investigate and criminally prosecute all those responsible: perpetrators, accomplices, and accessories after the crime of sexual abuse."

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