Spanish clergy sexually abused over 200,000 children, probe estimates

MADRID: Over 200,000 minors are estimated to have been sexually abused in Spain by the Roman Catholic clergy since 1940, according to an independent commission published on Friday.

The report did not give a specific figure but said a poll of over 8,000 people found that 0.6 percent of Spain´s adult population of around 39 million people said they had suffered sexual abuse by members of the clergy when they were still children.

The percentage rises to 1.13 percent -- or over 400,000 people -- when including abuse by lay members, Spain´s national ombudsman Angel Gabilondo told a news conference called to present the findings of the report which has over 700 pages.

The revelations in Spain are the latest to rock the Roman Catholic Church after a series of sexual abuse scandals around the world, often involving children, over the past 20 years. The commission also interviewed 487 victims, who stressed “the emotional problems” the abuse has caused them, Gabilondo said.

“There are people who have (died by) suicide... people who have never put their lives back together,” the former Socialist education minister said. Teresa Conde, a philosophy teacher who was abused for years by a friar starting at the age of 14 when she attended a religious school in the northwestern city of Salamanca in the early 1980, said she is “never going to be a normal person.”

“I´m never going to stop doing therapy or taking medicine,” the 57-year-old told AFP. Unlike in other nations, in Spain -- a traditionally Catholic country that has become highly secular -- clerical abuse allegations only recently started to gain traction, leading to accusations by survivors of stonewalling.