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Hundreds of thousands of people in Spain are feared to have been victims of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church. According to the investigator Ángel Gabilondo’s new report, it may be about 440,000 cases – corresponding to over one percent of the now adult population.
The Parliament in Madrid ordered the investigation after the newspaper El País raised the alarm in 2018 that a culture of abuse had quietly flourished in the church in Spain. Now Gabilondo has compiled material, among other things, in the form of testimonies from more than 8,000 people.
In the report he presented on Friday, Gabilondo condemns the silence of all “who could have done more to prevent” the exploitation, reports El País. And he proposes a fund for all those victims who “deserve to be heard, cared for and compensated”.