EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 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 us at:
Abusos@elpais.es
. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is:
Abusamerica@elpais.es
.
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The Episcopal Conference (CEE) and the Spanish Catholic Church have never wanted to reveal how many judicial convictions they have had for cases of clergy pedophilia nor the compensation they have paid, both in court and in private agreements. These are data, like others, that have always been hidden, but the secret list with the management of the 806 cases admitted by the Church sheds some light on it, revealed by this newspaper and which can be consulted in PDF format at the end of this article. . It is the list of complaints recognized by dioceses and orders that Alfredo Dagnino, the
CEE
mole
in the audit of the Cremades & Calvo-Sotelo law firm , drafted and leaked to the bishops , was later fired for it.
In that report, which cut the number of cases and left out more than 300 already recognized, more than a hundred convictions and compensations are cited.
Their interest lies in the fact that they are references for the future compensations that the EEC has agreed to pay, although it has not clarified at the moment what scales it will use. Until now, each order or diocese is on its own, according to its criteria. All this information, compiled in Dagnino's work, disappeared from the report
To shed light
that the EEC later published last December. The document of the bishops, in reality, assumed as is all the accounting of the lawyer's cases and literally copied almost all of its text, even the typos, but within the usual opacity in the Spanish Church, it hid all the relevant details about each case. .
The secret list reveals a very recent case in the diocese of Asidonia-Jerez de la Frontera, a particular agreement in 2022, in which the bishopric mediated between the victim and the Marianist order, and which resulted in compensation of 70,000 euros for abuse in the order's college in Jerez between 1964 and 1976. It is one of the highest known to date to a single person. The largest that has come to light is from the Jesuits, according to EL PAÍS, who paid 72,000 euros to a victim from Salamanca in 2002.
The sums are higher in some court rulings, according to the study. The highest known compensation, although it concerns several victims, is that imposed on the teacher at the Augustinian school of Valdeluz, in Madrid, sentenced in 2019 by the Supreme Court to 49 years in prison for abusing 12 students. The compensation was 142,000 euros, with subsidiary civil liability of the center. It is followed by the sentence of the Marist Joaquín Benítez at the Sants-Les Corts school in Barcelona, of 120,000 euros for abusing four students between 2006 and 2009 (60,000 for one victim, 40,000 for another and 10,000 for two others).
The Champagnat Foundation was subsidiary civilly liable, and the Marists' insurance company was directly civilly liable. These were the only cases that could be tried, since they had not expired, of at least 26 victims who accused Benítez of abuse, from 1980 to 2011. With another 25 families the Marists reached an agreement for which they paid 353,000 euros, according to order data, with individual compensation that ranged between 4,000 and 50,000 euros.
If the compensations to a single victim are considered, the best known is the one issued by the Superior Court of Castilla-La Mancha in 2022 against the priest JLG, a case revealed by this newspaper, which amounted to 100,000 euros, without the Church being considered subsidiary civil liability. The appeal to the Supreme Court is still pending resolution.
It is very significant that practically no canonical process, when there is one, contemplates the payment of compensation. Only some dioceses have done so, on their own initiative, through agreements with the victim, such as that of Cartagena. In the rest of the cases, the accused is simply removed or expelled, but the victim is not compensated. There are, however, some cases in which the accused is convicted canonically, but not in court.
For example, in one from 2010 in Seville, the archbishopric communicates that the court closed it due to lack of evidence but, in an incomprehensible way, it was suspended in perpetuity due to "recognition of the facts by the perpetrator." There are more contrary cases, canonical acquittals of cases that are later condemned in court. Like one in Córdoba of a priest later sentenced to five years in prison for abuse of a 10-year-old girl, reported in 2015. It has also happened in Guadix, Jaén and Ourense.
In other cases there is no compensation but the diocese bears the costs of therapy. In Cádiz and Ceuta there are at least seven girls who were victims of abuse in 2010 in a parish, another unknown and hidden case. They were offered psychiatric and psychological treatment. Five accepted it, and the bishopric paid 21,847 euros, “at a rate of 800 euros per month.” The bishopric assures that the victims did not want to file a complaint. In this diocese the same thing happened in 2008 with two other minors due to abuse in the home of a priest and who, according to the entity, preferred not to report: they were paid 18,710 euros for therapy.
Also emerging in the secret list is the practice of some dioceses of paying the compensation that the courts impose on a priest, as a loan, and then deducting it from his salary. In the diocese of Asidonia-Jerez, the bishopric paid the compensation of a priest, but then “monthly withholdings were made from his salary.” The same in Pamplona, where there is a sentence of 50,000 euros "that the Archbishopric assumes in the form of a loan that it grants to the condemned priest, who repays it monthly."
The bishopric of Barcelona points out a case in which it is the aggressor priest himself who compensates the victim: “Compensation stipulated by agreement between the victim and the perpetrator (30,000 euros).” Even so, among the numerous contradictions contained in the report's case classification system, according to its supposed credibility, it is classified as “not proven, but credible.” And although in the same case file it says: “Recognition of the facts by the victimizing priest.”
Until now, only compensations from the dioceses had emerged in the Ombudsman's investigation, published in October 2023. Only four bishoprics revealed them, and another three admitted them without clarifying the amount. Those four are Mallorca (30,000 euros), Tui-Vigo (44,000), Cartagena (47,000, 25,000 and 600) and Vitoria (5,000).
Condemnations of the Church in courts
Regarding the sentences that the Church has suffered in court, the secret list of orders and dioceses admits at least 53, although Dagnino's report adds a search of sentences in judicial databases that totals 67, although there are some acquittals. Of them, at least 23 do not appear in the previous list. That is, there are bishoprics and congregations that have not declared them, further proof of the gaps in the report and its controversial accounting of cases.
For example, the Neocatechumenal Way declares in the report that it does not know of any case, but one of the sentences found, from 2015, notes: “Adult enters the Community of the Neocatechumenal Way where he carries out activities with young people, whom he manages to sexually abuse.” . 2 crimes of sexual abuse. 1 crime of indecent exposure. 1 crime of exhibition of pornographic material.” The sentence was 14 years.
There are more judicial convictions than dioceses and orders have remained silent. The archdiocese of Madrid has not communicated that of priest Rafael Sanz Nieto in 2006, which imposed subsidiary civil liability on the archbishopric of Cardinal Rouco. The archdiocese of Valencia does not cite among its 15 admitted cases (with nine “not proven”) any conviction with compensation. However, the report then mentions one from 2013 with subsidiary civil liability of the city archbishopric with compensation of 58,000 euros.
The bishopric of Albacete only reports two cases, one from EL PAÍS and another from another diocese, but the compilation of sentences later indicates a sentence of 18 years in prison in 2021 for a priest for sexual abuse of six minor seminarians. One of the most surprising absences is in the Augustinians: they do not mention among their cases the conviction of the Valdeluz school in Madrid, the largest compensation recorded.
There is a particularly striking case in Ourense, because the bishop doubts the neutrality of the prosecutor in one case and notes: “There is express warning about the problems derived from the actions of the Orense Prosecutor's Office due to lack of objectivity and impartiality.” Although he is a priest denounced twice and convicted, according to Dagnino's report. But the diocese reproaches: "There is information about an action by the Prosecutor responsible for carrying out the public accusation in the case that is considered reprehensible due to an alleged lack of objectivity and impartiality due to the priestly status of the accused."
The report does not reveal what case it is, but it corresponds to the parish priest of Avión, Pablo Serafín ED The first complaint is from 2017, about events that occurred in 2006, during catechism hours. The sentence of the Provincial Court is from 2022, with a penalty of 18 months of fine, 2,700 euros.
The second complaint came later. When the case was published in the press, a new victim appeared who reported abuse when he was an altar boy in the parish and other victims emerged. In the management of the diocese, as in many other cases, a double aspect emerges in the care of victims. On the one hand, it is noted: “Listening, accompaniment and welcome are provided to everyone.” But on the other hand, regarding the parallel canonical trial of the priest it is stated: “Exculpatory vote of the diocesan bishop considering that the complaint could not be considered credible. An economic motive was alleged.”
A “comprehensive” plan still undefined
Until now, the only approximate figure that was known of what the Church had paid emerged from the EL PAÍS database, through published cases and judicial resolutions: at least 2.1 million euros to 230 victims who suffered. abuses of 53 pedophiles since 1991. That is, only 8.8% of the 2,608 victims that currently appear in this newspaper's database. The amounts paid range between 675 euros and 72,000 euros. The resulting average is 10,000. But the total amount that the Church has paid is greater, in light of the new information, since many cases were unknown until now. This newspaper will soon incorporate new cases into its database.
The payment of compensation is an issue that worries the bishops. If compared to what has happened in other countries, the bill in Spain can be millionaires. The figures abroad range from a minimum of almost 6,000 euros that the Church of Belgium has paid on average, to the 62,245 that the Church of Ireland has paid, the country with the highest compensation. With this range, and with the more than a thousand cases that the EEC already admits, in Spain it would mean payments of between six million and 62 million euros.
Compensation processes vary from country to country. In Ireland, for example, the Government created a Reparation Commission that established criteria based on the severity of the abuse and its consequences. The minimum payments started at 50,000 euros and, in five categories, up to 300,000. The commission assisted 15,594 victims. It paid, in total, 970 million euros, with an average of 62,245 per victim, the highest of the countries analyzed. The highest compensation was 300,500 euros.
A similar model is the one that the Ombudsman has proposed in his report, a state fund to remedy the payments and in which the Church must collaborate. And an independent commission to monitor the process. The Episcopal Conference, however, has refused. The bishops prefer their own procedure. At the moment, they have not announced a scale of how much they will pay, only that they will do so through a “national arbitration commission,” which will study each complaint.
This “comprehensive reparation plan” is conditional on the cases that the Church considers proven, which according to its report
To Give Light
are minimal. Of the 1,057 that, as of today, the Episcopal Conference officially registers – the figure has been updated in recent weeks after the scandal of the concealment of complaints by the bishops –, it only admits as “proven” and “ not proven, but credible”, a total of 358. That is, the Spanish Church only believes three out of every 10 victims, if the cases it admits are taken as a reference. But this percentage is even lower if it is compared to the total number of truly known cases, according to the EL PAÍS database, which currently registers 1,460 accused and 2,608 victims. In that case the percentage would be two out of every 10 victims.
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