The Church and the Government have reached an agreement to compensate victims of pedophilia who cannot go to justice, since the vast majority of cases are statute-barred.
The protocol will be signed this Monday at eleven in the morning, as announced on social networks by the Ombudsman, Ángel Gabilondo. Ten days ago, when there was already an agreement, the y refused to seal the agreement, as they planned to do that week. Sources familiar with the process then indicated that there was a discrepancy in the amounts that should be paid and also over whether the Ombudsman is competent to review the compensation that the Church has already paid internally, which, according to the victims’ associations, have been, on many occasions, “ridiculous and humiliating.” The protocol will mark the steps on how to execute the procedures to request and pay for said repairs.
On January 8, the Church agreed to take charge of reparations to victims of abuse under the supervision of the State. That day, the president of the Spanish Episcopal Conference (CEE), Archbishop Luis Argüello, and the president of the Spanish Conference of Religious (CONFER), in which they accepted that the Ombudsman would be the body that reviewed each case and established the amounts. The ecclesiastical hierarchy may appeal the defender’s resolutions, but accepted that the body has the last word.
Bolaños assured that morning that both the Executive and the Church would meet with Gabilondo to agree on how to implement the model and that in a month, at the latest, they would sign another agreement to decide the scale of compensation. The agreement, however, has taken almost three months to reach.
The implementation of this reparation model comes after the constant refusal of the EEC to confront the scandal and seven years after EL PAÍS launched an investigation into cases of pedophilia in the clergy. The work of this newspaper caused, among other measures, that Congress entrusted the Ombudsman with an absolute majority in 2022, which included reparations for those affected.
