The Spanish Prosecutor's Office receives from Bolivia the request for data to investigate the case of the pedophile Jesuit

EL PAÍS launched in 2018 an investigation of pedophilia in the Spanish Church and has an updated database with all known cases. If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to: abusos@elpais.es. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es.

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The Attorney General's Office of Bolivia has requested collaboration from the Attorney General's Office of the State of Spain to advance in the investigation of the case of Alfonso Pedrajas, uncovered by EL PAÍS, the Spanish Jesuit who abused dozens of children for decades in the Andean country and who kept a diary of his crimes. As the attorney general, Wilfredo Chávez, had advanced, Bolivia has already asked the International Cooperation Unit of the Spanish Prosecutor's Office to locate the priest's nephew, who was the one who found the newspaper after his death in 2009 and delivered it to this newspaper, and also to obtain the memoir document itself. The Prosecutor's Office has contacted EL PAÍS to request the information it has on the case.

The prosecutor's office of the Latin American country is investigating the case because, as Chávez explained in an interview with this newspaper, the crimes of pedophilia of Pedrajas, also known as Father Pica, "have not expired in Bolivia." "The Inter-American Court has determined that, in these cases, rape is assimilated to crimes against humanity," he argued. "This man has passed away and the crime is intuitu personae [criminal responsibility cannot be transferred to third parties]. But systematic cover-up does not. And we're going to achieve that [prosecute]. Above all, with the testimonies and the diary." He advanced that "there has been a systematic cover-up," according to the newspaper and the investigation of EL PAÍS.

Pedrajas recorded in writing in a diary his sexual abuse of dozens of children in Bolivia while he was a teacher in several schools of the order, mainly in the Juan XXIII, of Cochabamba, between 1960 and 2008. In the text, he also recounts how his superiors covered up his crimes (up to seven Jesuit superiors and a dozen Bolivian and Spanish clergy) and the complaints of some victims who came to the order. "I hurt a lot of people (85?) to too many," he admits. Since EL PAÍS began in 2018 its investigation into pedophilia in the Catholic Church, which has so far counted 954 cases only in Spain, it is the first time that a document allows to know the abuses and their cover-up from the side of the religious aggressor.

The Society of Jesus itself, after the publication of the report, cautiously suspended eight members of the order who in recent decades have passed through the position of provincial, the highest in a country, in Bolivia. Among them are at least five Spaniards, such as Marcos Recolons, who came to be at the top of the order in Rome. A former Jesuit, Pedro Lima, has revealed that he was expelled from the order in 2001 precisely for denouncing Pedrajas and other religious. In this sense, the Bolivian prosecutor's office also plans to request the collaboration in Spain of the Church and the Jesuits, as well as the Vatican.

Fernando Pedrajas, nephew of the accused priest, already took the case to the Spanish Prosecutor's Office, but it was archived, because it was prescribed and his uncle had died. Although the crimes of which he is accused have taken place in another country, the National Court has the power to judge Spaniards for acts committed abroad, but in this case it was no longer possible. Even so, they took a statement from him and also from a victim who testified from Bolivia. In an interview with this newspaper, Fernando Pedrajas announced his intention to try to reopen the complaint so that "the people who knew about the abuses that Pica committed and covered it up" can be judged. "My intention is to create a group of victims who support a general complaint to present it here, in Spain. Even if it is anonymously. I know the identity of many of the victims who have not yet spoken out," he said. To do this, you have created an email: asociacionvictimasj23@gmail.com.

The case of Pedrajas has caused a great impact in Bolivia, to the point of triggering a national debate on pedophilia in the Church, which until then had not occurred. Following the publication of the case, the Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, asked the Bolivian Catholic Church to pronounce itself forcefully and the country's episcopal conference apologized for the case. The Attorney General's Office is even considering opening a general investigation into all cases of abuse of minors in the Church of Bolivia, as Belgium and other countries have already done.