Based on the reading of very harsh testimonies, the commission of independent experts set up in Portugal at the end of 2021 to investigate the extent of pedocrime in the Catholic Church presented its final report for two long hours on Monday. February 13, in Lisbon. After a year of work, more than five hundred testimonies from victims collected and confirmed, dozens of interviews with high dignitaries of the Church and valuable access to diocesan archives, she concluded that at least 4,815 minors were victims of sexual violence since the 1950s. A figure “absolutely minimal”specified the coordinator of the commission, the child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, because undoubtedly much lower than reality.
In a country where 80% of the population defines itself as Catholic, and where 30% claim to be practicing, the publication of this report, revealing in black and white the abuses committed within the Portuguese Church covered by the silence of the institution , caused a shock. “It’s an open wound that hurts us and makes us ashamedreacted the president of the Portuguese Episcopal Conference, José Ornelas, immediately after the presentation of the report, which he followed in the front row of the auditorium of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. We apologize to all the victims: to those who courageously gave their testimony, after so many years of silence, and to those who still live with their pain in the depths of their hearts, without sharing it. »
The average age of the victims at the time of the events was 11.2 years. In 53% of cases, they were assaulted more than once and, in 27% of cases, for more than a year. Now in his fifties, the age “the lowest of the European countries where there is data”, underlined Mr. Strecht, they suffered attacks in seminaries (23%), churches (19%), confessionals (14%), parish houses (13%) and Catholic schools (7%). The “peak” of violence committed in the Portuguese Church was between the 1960s and the 1990s. But only 4% of the victims filed a complaint with the courts. Worse, 43% of them had never told what had happened to them before talking about it before the commission of experts.
Increased vulnerability
“The fundamental characteristic of abuse is the power that the abuser has over the child”, explained the psychiatrist and member of the commission Daniel Sampaio. Now, in the Church, this vulnerability is increased by the belief that “the priest is the voice of God”. Among the anonymous testimonies read, there is that of this child to whom the priest ordered to go to confession just after he had abused him, or that of these two other children who describe their mother’s refusal to believe. In 96% of cases, the aggressor was a man, and a priest in 77% of cases. Very few show a form of ” repentance “ : most seek to ” to justify oneself “explained filmmaker Catarina Vasconcelos, another member of the commission.
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