The double Oscar award-winning drama “Spotlight” has reignited debate about Catholic Church child abuse cover-ups.
The film tells the story of the Boston Globe journalists who uncovered a church plot that allowed priests to go unpunished for sexual crimes against children.
Accepting the award, producer Michael Sugar said he hoped the film’s message of complete intolerance towards institutional abuse – would “resonate all the way to the Vatican.”
Against this backdrop, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) announced that 56 victims had denounced abuse in Jalisco. This is the highest number of any state in the country, representing 21 percent of the nationwide total.
Only three of these cases have made it to court, owing to the fact that the vast majority of victims were abused as children and only brought the abuse to the notice of authorities when they were adults. Of these three cases, only one priest was arrested and held in custody.
Joaquin Aguilar Mendez, the SNAP’s director in Mexico, said the majority of cases were difficult or impossible to investigate because many of the priests had been moved to other parishes, disappeared or died. In such cases, the organization can only offer counselling to the victims.
When child abuse cases are brought to court, it is common in Mexico for lawyers to claim that victims consented to the actions. According to the law in Jalisco, when a person is aged between 12 and 18, there is a distinction between cases when consent has been offered and when there is no consent. The sentence for consensual statutory crimes normally ranges from six months to four years in prison. The onus is often on victims to make complaints to the authorities and prove that no consent was offered.
Aguilar Mendez, who was himself a victim of child abuse, said he did not want to generalize about the behavior of priests.
“Within the institution we know that there are very good people, and I want to emphasize not everyone in the church wants to cover up the crimes. Unfortunately, those at the top are not the best,” he said.
Only a few Catholic churches in Mexico have agreed to disseminate information about child abuse among their congregations. The priests and children at Catechism classes in selected churches in Mexico City, San Luis Potosi and Jalisco can also receive guidance from trained psychologists. The three cooperating churches, who asked not to be named by the media, were invited to participate in the program because they had a history of abuse scandals.
The sexual abuse of children by priests has received significant media attention in Mexico in recent years brought on by high-profile case of Marcial Maciel, the founder of the popular religious order Legion of Christ who was discovered to have lived a secret life of rampant child abuse and drug use. Documents later proved that the Vatican was aware of Maciel’s behavior but refused to report him to authorities.
Jalisco is considered a Catholic Church stronghold in Mexico. Nine out of 10 people consider themselves Catholic in Jalisco, making it one of the three states with the highest number of believers, the others being Guanajuato and Aguascalientes.