{
  "id": 159697,
  "title": "Why many victims of pedophilia conclude that reporting to the Church is of no use: “I feel disgust and powerlessness”",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/05/por-que-muchas-victimas-de-pederastia-concluyen-que-no-sirve-para",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-08-05T03:30:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "El Pais",
    "slug": "el-pais",
    "url": "https://elpais.com/sociedad/2026-08-05/por-que-muchas-victimas-de-pederastia-concluyen-que-no-sirve-para-nada-denunciar-ante-la-iglesia-siento-asco-e-impotencia.html"
  },
  "original_language": "es",
  "account": "EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has a database updated with all known cases. If you know of a case that has not come to light, you can write to: abusos@elpais.es If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: abusosamerica@elpais.es\n\nJ. G. C. is 59 years old and recounts being a victim of sexual abuse when he was a minor, at the beginning of the 1980s, by one of those responsible for the Segovia seminary, A. G. R. He was 13 years old. “I was with the rest of my companions in line to go to the movies. A. G. R. told me I had to stay and go up to the room. He and another teacher entered. A. went to my bed and ripped off my clothes; the other, seeing this, left. I tried to resist. He told me to stay calm and started caressing and touching me and I am not capable of remembering anything else. Only that the next day he told me to stay in bed because I was sick,” J. G. C. says in a café in Motril.\n\nAfter filing a complaint with the Segovia bishopric, the canonical tribunal of the Rota in Spain has just closed the case due to “lack of evidence and a conclusive testimony,” according to what they have communicated to the family.\n\nThe priest, who is now 80 years old, has assured in the canonical process opened that he is innocent and blamed another student, a friend of the victim, for the abuse.\n\nThis case, already prescribed for the courts, is representative of how many canonical processes are managed: usually, the accused is believed more than the victim; hardly anything is investigated; barely any information about the cause is provided to the complainant, which in this case has lasted almost a year; witnesses proposed by the accusation are dismissed.\n\nThe only report from the Spanish Church on the scandal, called Para dar luz, from 2023, only considered one in ten known cases credible.\n\nIn many cases, the complaint is hidden from the Vatican (despite the obligation to communicate them to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith since 2001), or when the case is sent, it is already with a proposal to close it, which this body limits itself to endorsing.\n\nIn this case, the bishopric ensures that “the results have been transferred to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is responsible for resolving these issues.”\n\nThe diocese has threatened to take legal action against the complainant's family if they went to the press — “We received a call from a person who said they were a lawyer from the bishopric, in which we were told that this would have consequences: a lawsuit, the suffering of the Catholic Church, and innocent people,” T. G. C, one of the victim's sisters, recounts.\n\nAt least since April 15, they can go to the official reparation system of the Ministry of Justice, an alternative to all those that the Church files.\n\nThere is a relevant detail: despite closing the case, the bishopric removed the priest from having contact with minors.\n\nThe bishop of Segovia assured the sisters that A.G.R. “has been suspended from the capacity to be in pastoral activities with children.”\n\nThey asked him then if he had minors in his charge. “No, he does not have them. But let him know that he cannot have them,” he replied.\n\nJ.'s hands and arms still tremble when he talks about that night, of which he remembers nothing more than what he denounced.\n\nFor the bishop of Segovia, Jesús Vidal Chamorro, there are “inconsistencies,” which have led the Rota tribunal to propose closing the case, on which Rome will have the final say.\n\nIn a recording that EL PAÍS has had access to, Chamorro, in a conversation with T. G. C. and C. G. C., two of the six sisters of the victim, tells them: “I understand that in your childhood, something may have happened to your brother, but what and with whom we cannot deduce from the statements, because there are many contradictions. I cannot initiate a cause against someone without clear evidence, because that would also be an injustice.”\n\nWhat they claim to have “suffered” since then is an example, they consider, of the abandonment to which many victims are exposed when they go through an ecclesiastical investigation in the Rota tribunal: they only collected information from the Church's internal personnel, they did not call key witnesses provided by the family to testify, and, in addition, according to the victim's complaint, the questions asked by the judge were about the facts reported by the alleged abuser and not those he denounced.\n\n“I feel disgust and impotence. How can there be people like that?” J. says, who shows a depressed and sickly appearance and attends a psychiatrist three hours a week.\n\nHe recounts that, at 18 years old, as soon as he got his driver's license, he looked for a psychologist. “I felt that I was not okay, but I was not able to tell him what had happened to me. Neither him nor anyone else until a couple of years ago, I felt a lot of shame,” he says.\n\nHe had a couple of suicide attempts, addictions, and debts, as many of the businesses he started failed.\n\nHis sisters always suspected that something bad had happened to him during his stay at the seminary.\n\nOne of the phrases he most repeated was that his life was ruined from when he was there. He is devastated,” T. says, who also remembers seeing him depressed at home.\n\n“He cried and told my mother that he did not want to go back to the seminary,” she adds.\n\nA couple of years ago, he finally told them that he had suffered sexual abuse by A. G. R.\n\nFour of the six sisters decided to go see this priest “to know his version”; they approached him in Segovia after mass last summer, and he, who remembered J. “as if he had seen him the day before,” received them in an office.\n\nThe four told him, according to a recording that this newspaper has had access to, that their brother is doing very...",
  "summary": "The court of Rota and the bishopric of Segovia are closing a complaint of abuse in the city’s seminary without calling any of the witnesses requested by the family and only believing the version of the accused priest.",
  "key_points": [
    "J. G. C. abused at 13 by Segovia seminary official A. G. R.",
    "Tribunal dismissed case due to lack of evidence and testimony",
    "Only 1 in 10 Church cases considered credible in 2023 report"
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}