The director of the information office of the Spanish Bishops' Conference, Josetxo Vera, published on April 15 a article in El Mundo in which, in a respectful tone, he reproaches Minister Félix Bolaños for the disinformation he is promoting in his repeated public statements on the agreement reached on March 30 between the Catholic Church, the Ombudsman and the Government for the reparation of victims of sexual abuse.
Vera's text is great news, especially insofar as it breaks the spiral of silence that seemed to have been installed in the Spanish Church regarding the lack of consistency of the government and the political class when it comes to truly investigating the sexual abuse of minors.
The Minister's falsehoods
Vera's article argues that the minister is constructing a narrative that does not conform to the facts or the truth, and refutes several of his assertions:
First of all, he questions the idea that before these agreements, victims did not receive attention. He points out that this is not correct, since the Church created in 2020 more than 200 offices throughout Spain for the care of victims of abuse and the protection of minors, to which more than a thousand people have gone in recent years.
He also denies that the Church has begun to pay compensation only as a result of these agreements. As he explains, the institution has been doing so for some time in different ways: complying with the compensation ordered by the civil, criminal or canonical justice; making payments voluntarily even without judicial obligation; and applying the reparation measures contemplated in the Plan of Integral Reparation for Victims of Abuse (PRIVA), especially in cases where justice could not intervene due to the statute of limitations of the crime or death of the aggressor.
Likewise, Vera rejects the statement that the agreement establishes that the State fixes the indemnities and the Church pays them. He clarifies that, although it is the Church who assumes the payment, the amount is not determined by the State, but arises from an agreement between the Ombudsman's proposal and that of PRIVA. He suggests that to interpret otherwise would imply that the Government understands that the Ombudsman is not an independent figure.
The article also argues that, in matters of child abuse, the Church has been able to act in areas where the State finds legal limits, such as in cases where the statute of limitations has expired or the offender has died, situations in which the ordinary justice system cannot intervene.
What the minister does not say
On the other hand, Vera points out aspects that, in his opinion, the minister omits. Among them, he highlights the existence of prevention and action protocols developed by the Church, and stresses that other institutions have not implemented similar structures of attention to victims. He adds that some victims of abuse in other areas turn to church offices for lack of alternatives.
He also mentions that financial compensation received by victims must currently be taxed, something that he believes looks set to change soon thanks to the Church's insistence.
Finally, she recalls that the minister committed himself in a pre-agreement signed in January to address the comprehensive reparation of victims of abuse in all social spheres, including those under the direct responsibility of public administrations, an aspect that, according to Vera, is not being sufficiently taken into account by the government.
The silence of the media
So much for the content of Josetxo Vera's article. To this can be added another relevant element of the Spanish context: the scant interest of the media in demanding that the government fulfill its commitments. This phenomenon, however, is not new, since for years there has been a double yardstick on these matters, as several examples show.
On the one hand, the limited pressure exerted by “public opinion” when, in 2020, the negligence of some politicians and public administrations in the management and concealment of child abuse in centers under their care came to light.
On the other, the scant criticism of the media that proclaim themselves champions of the fight against abuse when, in 2022, Congress refused to open an investigation into abuses in all social spheres, choosing instead to confine itself only to cases related to the Church.
It is also worth noting the lack of insistence that the government make public detailed data on the origin of the cases of sexual abuse of minors that are registered each year. The only official reference in this regard comes from the Attorney General's Office in 2023, whose data indicated that 0.45 % of the complaints corresponded to the ecclesiastical sphere, also including lay personnel linked to educational centers.
In light of these elements, there are growing doubts as to whether there is an effective commitment, on the part of both the government and the media, to comprehensively address the reduction of child sexual abuse in all areas of society.
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