Portugal: Investigation Into Sexual Crimes in the Catholic Church

Several investigations have recently revealed grim picture of sexual abuse in churches.

Children have long been victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, nuns and even church officials.

In addition to Canada and France, Portuguese Catholic churches were also involved in such sexual scandals.

To investigate sexual abuse in one of these church, an independent commission was created in January.

Since then, the commission has already received 290 valid testimonies of the victims and 16 cases have already been referred to the prosecutor.

After collecting testimonies from those who suffered abuse inside the church, a report will be given to the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP) to decide what to do next.

 

Catholic Sexual Crimes

The Portuguese Independent Commission for the Investigation of Sexual Offenses in the Catholic Church, created in January this year, said that, during the first three months, it had registered 290 testimonies alleged victims, including children, who claim they have been sexually abused by the Church’s members years ago. According to a press conference in Lisbon, the Independent Commission plan is to continue collecting testimonies until the end of this year.

A report will be given to the CEP, which will decide what action to take, Reuters reported.

The commission said on Tuesday April 12, 2022, that nearly 300 testimonies of alleged victims were collected so far, and they were “just the tip of the iceberg.”

“There have been multiple cases of sexual abuse of children and teenagers in the past,” said the head of the commission, child psychiatrist Pedro Strecht, saying that more than half of the 290 testimonies refer to “many more victims.”

According to Reuters, the sexual assaults were heard  from victims born between 1933 and 2009, from every region of the country and “also from Portuguese nationals living in other European nations, the United States, Mexico and Canada.”

Based on the recent testimonies, most of the victims were men, abused when they were only 2 years old.

The commission started investigating in January 2022 after a French commission’s report revealed in 2021 that around 3,000 priests and other religious officials sexually abused more than 200,000 children over the past 70 years, according to the same source.

 

‘Seeking To Cover Up’

During the investigation, more than half of the reported cases “indicate the involvement of church officials, including current (unnamed) bishops,” said psychiatrist Pedro Strecht.

In fact, the doctor accused some religious officials involved in that case of “seeking to cover up the occurrence of the violations.”

The Portuguese commission, made up of six people, was created at the request of the Portuguese Bishops' Conference.

In this context, Ana Nunes Almeida, a professor of sociology at the University of Lisbon and a member of the committee, explained in a press conference that the allegations recorded so far “are related to the abuse of children aged between two and 17 years.”

The investigation committee said the victims are mostly male, and the incidents related to sexual abuse occurred when some minors were in the care of the church and other groups were studying Christianity ethics.

According to Euronews, retired judge Alvaro Laborinho Lucio said that the committee presented 16 cases to the public prosecutor’s office.

He said most of the alleged cases have their statute of limitations expired which were reported by people aged up to 88.

The youngest person who alleged sexual abuse was born in 2009, the committee said.

“Over the years there have been clear situations of serious sexual abuse committed inside the Portuguese Catholic Church,” Laborinho Lucio said.

 

Over and Over

In recent years, reports of child sexual abuse behind church doors, have become increasingly commonplace in Europe.

Last year, the Independent Commission of Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse in French Catholic Churches, issued a report revealing 330,000 cases of sexual violence occurred in the country’s churches between 1950 and 2020.

In 2018, an investigation was conducted after the Vatican request, about the possibility of sexual abuse in the German Catholic Church.

The results were positive where more than 3,600 children were sexually assaulted or abused by Catholic priests between 1948 and 2014.

Although priest accusations of sexual abuse against children began in the 1950s, the issue was first given important media attention in the 1980s, in the US and Canada.

In fact, in the 1990s, these allegations started to come to light with stories emerging in Argentina, Australia and many other European countries.

In 1995, the Archbishop of Vienna was fired amid sexual abuse allegations, in Austria.

Taking the example of the US, the Boston Globe newspaper reported that there was widespread abuse and many pedophile priests “were moved around by Church leaders instead of being held accountable.” This prompted people to courageously expose these violations across the US and around the world.

A Church-commissioned report in 2004 said that “more than 4,000 US Roman Catholic priests had faced sexual abuse allegations in the last 50 years, in cases involving more than 10,000 children, mostly boys.”

In fact, the sexual and psychological abuse and violation were like a “chronic disease” in Catholic schools and Irish orphanages during the 20th century, a 2009 report indicated.