The causes and perception of child sexual abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church

The issue of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church has come to the fore in recent years. In terms of academia and criminology, researchers in many countries have gained access to the Church's internal information and archives, something that is yet to happen in Spain. Following interviews with about 20 clergymen and members of religious congregations, a UOC-led study is now looking into the causes and perception of this problem from inside the Church itself.

The open study, which is led by Josep M. Tamarit, professor of Criminal Law at the UOC's Faculty of Law and Political Science and lead researcher of the VICRIM research group at the UOC, and Marc Balcells, a member of the UOC's Faculty of Law and Political Science and a researcher in the same research group, analyses child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church based on the idea that it has multiple causes. As well as in the paper resulting from the study, this topic is also covered in the book Abusos sexuales en la iglesia católica: análisis del problema y de la respuesta jurídica e institucional, edited by Josep M. Tamarit.

"The main difference between our study and those conducted in other countries is that, in Spain, the Church as an institution has been very unwilling to get involved, while in other places it has partnered with academics to understand the roots of the problem," said Tamarit. "Our aim was to understand how this phenomenon is perceived by the Church and to establish whether cultural and institutional aspects of the Church itself could be related to the emergence of these criminal conducts. We also wanted to find out how this phenomenon affects clergymen, their perception and opinion about the way the Church has dealt with these problems, and their attitude towards abusers."

Internal perception and the causes of abuse in the Church

The study carried out at the UOC is based on a number of in-depth interviews with members of the Church. To conduct these interviews, the researchers started by contacting seven dioceses (although only two of them replied, refusing to get involved) and over a hundred parish priests and members of congregations. Thanks to the assistance provided by the religious association Unió de Religiosos de Catalunya, they finally managed to interview 20 clergymen. The study led to the following main conclusions:

• Partial acknowledgement of the issue. Although most interviewees admitted that there are cases of child sexual abuse in the Church, many said that the number of such cases is lower in Spain and Catalonia than in other countries. Some of them also avoided the direct use of terms such as "attack" and "abuse" for such cases.
• Lack of control mechanisms. Some interviewees said that the Church lacks an internal monitoring and control structure and that it is less organized and disciplined than it may appear to outsiders.
• There are individual risk factors. Individual risk factors appear when you start looking into the causes in greater depth. These include, among others, strong power imbalances in a community, loneliness (particularly among parish priests) and even cases of badly handled homosexuality at a particular time and in a particular geographic context.
• Cultural risk factors have also been identified. One example of this is that sexual abuse is sometimes seen only as a sin rather than as a criminal offence. If it is considered only in terms of sinning, it can be forgiven without any kind of court-mandated punishment or victim reparation process.
• At an institutional level, these conducts can be perpetuated by aspects such as secrecy, lack of transparency around clergy recruitment and training mechanisms, the absence of an open-door culture and the opacity of the Church itself.
• Anomie. This is a situation arising from a dissociation between extreme ideals, such as celibacy, and a diverging reality. In other words, anomie arises when the reality that someone is living in seriously challenges their identity, vocation and moral idealism.
• There are neutralization and denial techniques. All offenders rationalize and neutralize their criminal behaviour. The study has identified a certain discourse of neutralization - which is not always necessarily conscious - and even denial around the issue of child sexual abuse.

The solution involves greater transparency and justice

"The route to preventing more cases of child sexual abuse from taking place in the Church has been opened up by many countries: large numbers of committees, restorative justice and victim reparation," said Marc Balcells. "Denialism harms both the Church and the victim, who's even denied victim status. From an academic point of view, the university's aim is to carry out scientific work, find patterns and try to get to the root of the problem".

According to the conclusions of the study, understanding that child sexual abuse is linked not just to individual aspects but also to institutional and cultural matters ranging from clergy recruitment and training to the way the possible criminal offence is perceived is crucial. The challenge lies in accepting that the problem must be dealt with on multiple fronts and undertaking institutional and cultural reforms, as well as improving the support provided to members of the clergy. The study concludes that the debate on all these matters must be normalized within the institutions of the Church.

This UOC research supports Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16: Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions.

Article:

Tamarit JM, Balcells M. Between Sanctity and Real Life: Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church in Spain. Sexual Abuse. March 2022. doi:10.1177/10790632221078292

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