The socialist Gabilondo detects many more abuses in non-religious schools than in the Church but he only points out the Church

@ElentirENG ES 10·27·2023 · 19:29 0

This Friday we have seen a new example of the extent to which socialists can manipulate and hide what makes them uncomfortable.

Sexual abuse against children and the infamous attitude of the Spanish left
A Spanish minister says children can “have sexual relations with whoever they want”

Gabilondo detected 487 victims but uses a survey to raise them to 445,000

This Friday, former PSOE deputy Ángel Gabilondo, appointed Ombudsman in November 2021 after failing three times as a socialist candidate for the presidency of the Community of Madrid, has presented a report titled "Report on sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and the role of public powers". The report can be read here (PDF). It consists of 777 pages.

The report includes a GAD3 survey about which the Ombudsman's office has highlighted the following: "the GAD3 survey also concludes that 0.6% of the representative sample of the population surveyed has been sexually assaulted by a Catholic priest or religious, and 1.13% that the attack was recorded in the religious sphere."

Starting from these percentages, Europa Press and other media outlets have concluded that "some 236,000 people have suffered sexual abuse in the Church by a priest or religious", and that the number of victims of abuse in the religious sphere would be around 445,000 people. However, page 205 of the report reduces the victims of abuse of which it has been aware to 487, and of them only 334 would be through direct testimonies from the victims themselves.

Possibly the PSOE and some media have found the numbers very low (to me a single case would seem somewhat scandalous) after so many years pointing out the Church on this issue, and they have based in a mere survey to multiply that figure by 913, without there being judicial data that indicates anything even remotely similar to those figures that some media are giving.

The survey revealed many more abuses in non-religious schools than in the Church

On the other hand, the survey carried out by GAD3 has produced data that exposes the report itself, which is limited to pointing out cases of sexual abuse related to the Catholic Church. On page 172 there is a table that indicates that in the non-religious educational field the percentage is higher (9.6%) than in the religious educational field (5.9%) and that in the religious sphere (4.6%). However, the report focuses on pointing out the Catholic Church and omits any criticism of the State for not investigating this much higher number of abuses in secular schools. In fact, although the report indicates the percentage of Spaniards who have suffered abuse in the ecclesiastical sphere (always according to that survey), it does not indicate the percentages of abuse in other spheres, perhaps because these percentages would make derail the purpose of the report itself.

An effort to cover up the responsibility of the PSOE in these cases

There is another reason for this omission: a large part of the responsibility would fall on Ángel Gabilondo's own party, the PSOE, which has had the Ministry of Education in its hands for many years, in addition to having had in charge of the education departments of different autonomous governments.

The report indicates that according to this GAD3 survey, "11.7% of people surveyed indicated that they had been victims of sexual abuse before the age of 18". Based on the figure of 39,415,017 people aged 18 and over used by Europa Press in its news, the result is 4.6 million victims of sexual abuse of minors in Spain in total (4,611,556, to be more exact). Applying the percentage indicated in the report in the aforementioned table on page 172 (9.6%), the victims of abuse in non-religious schools would be 442,709. A colossal figure that should generate a huge scandal, if this survey had a real basis. What the PSOE must explain now is what it has done in all the years it has governed to investigate this problem.

The PSOE voted against investigating abuses under the responsibility of two of its governments

As it is foreseeable that the PSOE will not answer that question, I will provide some data: in recent years, the PSOE has voted against investigating sexual abuse of minors in the Balearic Islands and the Valencian Community, abuses committed under the responsibility of socialist governments. In the case of the Balearic Islands, 16 abuses of minors were reported supervised by the regional government since 2016, and in the Valencian Community there were 127. The PSOE voted against investigating these cases because they affected it. Last year, the socialist Gabilondo presented a report pointing out that these abuses occur among minors under guardianship in "many" communities, but he forgot to say that his party refused to investigate cases that were in his charge.

In 2022 the PSOE voted against investigating 99.8% of child abuse

In February 2022, this desire to hide cases affecting socialist governments was once again evident when the PSOE and its Podemos partners refused to investigate 99.8% of sexual abuse of minors in Spain, because they only wanted to investigate those related to the Catholic Church (0.2% of the cases according to data collected by the ANAR Foundation, and not by a mere survey). Investigating these cases would have brought to light the responsibility of the left in hiding them, which is why they voted against investigating them. And now they have the shamelessness to launch a campaign (yet another) against the Church using this issue.

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Photo: PSOE.