The superior prosecutor's offices of the autonomous communities have sent in recent days the list of cases currently open for alleged abuse or sexual assault on minors "within congregations, schools or any other religious institution."

The figures for the 17 superior prosecutors add up to 56 cases.

The prosecutors thus respond to the request sent on January 31 by the State Attorney General, Dolores Delgado, which gave them a period of 10 days to collect and send that information.

The largest figure corresponds to Catalonia, where the Public Ministry has reported nine cases currently open that would fit what Delgado claimed.

Galicia follows, with seven cases of these characteristics.

Madrid and Murcia report half a dozen each, while in Andalusia, Castilla-La Mancha and the Balearic Islands five cases are investigated in each.

The Superior Prosecutor's Office of the Basque Country has communicated four open cases and Castilla y León, three.

Comunidad Valenciana, Aragón and Canarias contribute two cases each.

For their part, the prosecutors of Asturias, Extremadura, Cantabria, La Rioja and Navarra have reported that they have no open case for crimes of this type in the religious sphere.

difficult cases

This is the second time that Dolores Delgado has tried to collect cases of this type open throughout Spain.

The first attempt she did as Minister of Justice.

On that occasion, Delgado requested the data from the then attorney general, María José Segarra.

The response took months and was that there was no disaggregated information in the databases according to those criteria.

Apart from that response, the attorney general's office then highlighted the difficulty of discerning in many cases whether the open investigation fell into the required category.

For example, how to qualify the case of a lay teacher who works in a religious center was raised.

The casuistry sent in recent days to the Attorney General's Office reflects this variety of situations and prosecutorial sources consider it likely that the criteria of the higher prosecutor's offices to include a case on their list has not been identical.

In the information offered yesterday by the Madrid Public Prosecutor's Office, for example, that case of the gym teacher who works in a religious center appears, but he himself is not.

In the case that a former student denounces, it is not known whether the alleged perpetrator was religious or not.

Not all cases are, furthermore, referred to the Catholic Church, although the vast majority are.

Among the half dozen open cases in Madrid there is one in which the investigated is a pastor of the Evangelical Church.

In another, he is linked to the Jehovah's Witnesses.

The cases reported are only those currently open.

Those archived are not included, although the closure is provisional and they may be reopened.

In some writings, however, its existence is mentioned.

Catalonia, for example, specifies that in addition to the nine open cases, it has four archived.

Cases already sentenced are not included either.

For example, in Asturias no assumption is reported, although a few months ago the TSJ ratified seven years in prison for a former head of the Jesuits in La Rioja.

In the data from Castilla y León there is no open case in Valladolid, although the conviction of a priest who abused the daughter of a homeless woman was recently confirmed.

The intention of the Attorney General's Office when compiling the information is to obtain a general vision of the problem that facilitates the adoption of measures that prevent the commission of the acts or ensure their investigation and eventual prosecution.

Conforms to The Trust Project criteria

Know more

  • Dolores Delgado

  • Asturias

  • The Rioja

  • Castile and Leon

  • Cantabria

  • Navarre

  • Aragon

  • Valladolid

  • Estremadura

  • Canary Islands

  • Murcia

  • Galicia

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