The country launched in 2018 an investigation of pedophilia in the Spanish Church and has Updated with all known cases. If you know any case that has not seen the light, you can write to: . If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: .
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Mazazo for the company of Jesus Bolivian. The judge who on Tuesday sentenced two senior positions of the order to a year to cover up the abuses of the Spanish missionary Alfonso Pedrajas – – has ordered that the Bolivian prosecutor be referred to the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office a dozen other cases of clerical pedophilia that have emerged during the process, in which there are also indications of cover -up, so that they investigate them and “whether it corresponds or not to open cause against them”. In the Chamber of the Anti -Corruption Criminal Court and against Violence against Women number 4 of Cochabamba and on Friday he hopes to deliver the complete resolution. The new parts of the ruling have been known after the Association of Victims Bolivian Community of Survivors (CBS) spread a video of the magistrate reading.
The resolution of the Bolivian Justice is historical, since it is the first time that a court condemns two senior ecclesiastical positions for covering up a case in which the pedophile has died before being tried and when the crimes of abuse are prescribed. The two convicted of Catalan origin, Marcos Reolons, 81 and Ramón Alaix, 83, held the position of Provincial in Bolivia, the maximum position of the Society of Jesus within a country and whose mandate usually lengthens several years, during the periods in which more denunciations against Pedrajas reached the order. Reolons from 1993 to 1999, and Alaix between 1999 and 2007. The first, in addition, became the number two of the Order in Rome, in the General Curia, between 2004 and 2012.
In both cases, the judge’s resolution is clear: “having resulted in the evidence produced, in trial, sufficient for this Court to acquire the conviction of its responsibility, consequently imposing the penalty of one year of deprivation [de libertad] which must be fulfilled in the San Sebastián Penitentiary Center of Cochabamba, with coasts in favor of the State, and the repair of all civil damages in favor of the victims, once this sentence reaches the quality of res judicata. ”In Bolivia the penalty of jail is not fulfilled if this is less than three years.
As a protection measure, the judge has ordered that the Municipal Integral Legal Services (Slim) of the Autonomous Government of Cochabamba “provide all the necessary attention to the victims of this process, in order to seek their restoration.” The magistrate, in addition, has ordered that cover -ups “undergo psychological treatment within the therapeutic program dependent on the institution Men of Peace.”
The Victims Association has celebrated the decision to expand the investigation to other cases and indicates that “it is barely the tip of the iceberg”The Pedrajas Diario came to light on April 30, 2023 thanks to an investigation by El País. In that document, Pedrajas confessed that he sexually assaulted dozens of minors between 1972 and the beginning of the 2000s in several schools of the Order. He also details how his superiors, especially Recolons and Alaix, covered him. After the publication, the Bolivian prosecution reacted and opened an investigation.
The scandal caused a waterfall of complaints, not only against pedrajas but against other Jesuits. Most of these new cases were uncovered by this newspaper and are what has now been sent to the Fiscal Ministry to investigate them. “With this sentence, the judge has opened the doors of hell for the Jesuit priests,” said Edwin Alvarado, Secretary of International Relations of the Association of Victims CBS.
The other cases of cover -up
The role of the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office to know the reality of the cover -up of clerical abuses has been decisive. In May 2023, after the investigations of this newspaper saw the light, he registered the company’s headquarters in La Paz and Cochabamba, where he found dozens of cards and internal reports that revealed eight unpublished cases of pedophile They decided to cover them, transfer the defendants or buy the silence of the victims.
Of the new unpublished cases,, stands out by the Jesuit Pancho Flores, of Bolivian origin, who was accused of sexual aggression against “a young man.” Alaix then writes a letter to the deceased general of the Jesuits in Rome, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, to tell him what happened: “He introduced a young man who told him that the priest who lived in the first quarter had invited him to pass his room and had abused him. He also said that Father Flores came out some nights in his mobility and invited young people to accompany him. (…) And the superior father gave him a small amount, of which he later regretted, and communicated it to me. ” Alaix asks Kolvenbach for advice, which suggests that “it would be convenient to give a new destination” to Flores and “a sabbatical year” accompanied by psychological therapy.
The Jesuit leader in Rome sends him a long letter talking about chastity. Flores was never sectioned, moreover, he came to hold the position of deputy secretary of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference in 2004.
In addition to these, the Prosecutor’s Office of Bolivia has open other causes, such as the reference to the abuses committed in 1964 by the Spanish Jesuit Alejandro Mestre (already deceased and who arrived in the eighties to Archbishop of La Paz already occupied the position of the General Secretariat of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference). In this case, two of their predecessors, Osvaldo Chirveches, 52, and the Spanish octogenarian Ignacio Suñol are charged by cover -up.
Another pending cause is the one that arose following another investigation from El País, published in June last year. In this case, another Catalan Jesuit, Lucho Roma, detailed in manuscripts how he sexually assaulted for decades of hundreds of indigenous girls in Bolivia. He photographed them and recorded them on video. The Society of Jesus conducted an internal investigation in 2019 that confirmed the crimes and their cover -up, but after the death of Lucho Roma in that same year, they hid the findings in a drawer.
Nor did they repair the victims, although Lucho Roma had incorporated the name of 70 of them in their text. When this newspaper published the report, the Bolivian Prosecutor ordered to open a judicial case. Since then, those affected claim that there has been no progress.
