The Spanish judiciary intends to investigate numerous cases of alleged child abuse in the Catholic Church.
Chief Public Prosecutor Dolores Delgado has already instructed the regional public prosecutors' offices to collect all suspected cases and reports and send them to Madrid within the next 10 days, the state television station RTVE and the newspaper El País reported on Tuesday, citing judicial sources.
Initially, there was no official announcement, but the radio station Cadena Ser quoted a spokesperson of the Chief Public Prosecutor's Office as saying that "the victims will have their say" and that in those cases in which no prosecution measures could be taken due to the statute of limitations, "a victim-oriented justice system will be applied."
The aim is to ensure that "something like this never happens again."
About nine months ago, the Catholic Church in Spain had disclosed data on cases of child abuse for the first time.
At that time, the Bishops' Conference announced that since 2001 there had been a total of 220 recorded cases of sexual abuse by clergy. For 151 cases, the internal investigation had already been completed, it said.
Church's measures "insufficient"
Further details, such as the number of victims or information on perpetrators or crime scenes, were not revealed.
In Spain, the public prosecutor's office had already warned in 2019 that the Church's measures to detect and prevent child sexual abuse were "insufficient."
At the time, the Church was ordered to bring any suspicions to court without "internal checks or filters."
