Spain religious order finds 25 cases of sexual abuse

The Marist Brothers congregation in Spain said Thursday that 25 minors were sexually abused by former teachers of Roman Catholic religious order at its schools the country.

The order launched an commission to investigate sexual abuse at its schools after a court in 2019 sentenced a former teacher to nearly 22 years in jail for abusing four students from 2006 to 2020 in Barcelona.

Thirteen other former students at the school also accused him of sexual abuse but their cases could not go to trial because the alleged crimes happened too long ago.

“We studied the cases of 25 victims, we listened to them, and a process of recognition of their status as victims is underway,” said a spokesman for the order in Spain.

He declined to give further details about the conclusions of the commission, which will be presented next week.

“We were the first congregation to put in place an independent commission to listen to the victims,” the spokesman told AFP.

The order has agreed to pay 400,000 euros ($486,000) in compensation to the victims,, according to a source with knowledge of the agreement who asked not to be named.

The amount paid to each one varying depending in the seriousness of the case, the source added.

Spanish media in 2016 began reporting on dozens of alleged cases of alleged sexual abuse at Marist schools in Barcelona between 1970 and 2010.

The reports helped break the wall silence which had existed in Spain until then about cases of clerical sexual abuse and led to a rise in accusations.

The Marist community was at the centre of a major clerical abuse scandal that erupted in Chile in 2017 and led to the resignation of 34 bishops in the Latin American country.

Sexual abuse scandals involving priests and teachers at Catholic schools around the world have led to costly legal action, are blamed for an exodus of believers, and have damaged the Church’s moral standing in hitherto staunchly Catholic states like Spain.