by he German Marist Institute recognizes the sexual abuse who suffered 25 of his former students during his schooling in Catalan schools of the brotherhood. A gesture that comes 30 or 40 years after the events occurred for many of those affected and almost five after EL PERIÓDICO uncovered the Maristas Case. The reparation commission that started in February of this year has listened to these 25 victims contributed by the Mans Petites Foundation and has given credibility to their story. The former students will be financially compensated by the religious organization, which has also sent them a letter in which the institution is “deeply ashamed” and asks for “forgiveness” with “all its heart.” To this figure of 25 aggrieved by the pedophilia of Marist teachers, we must add the four victims for which the teacher was convicted. Joaquim Benitez –who is still free–. A count that still remains far from the real number of minors who suffered sexual abuse, for decades, in the institution’s schools.
The investigation of this newspaper that began in February 2016 has already accumulated 51 police complaints against 18 teachers (12 religious brothers, five lay teachers and a dining room monitor) from the schools of Sants-Les Corts, Inmaculada and Anna Ravell (Barcelona), Champagnat (Badalona), Valldemia (Mataró) and Montserrat (Lleida) due to events that occurred between 1962 and 2018. This newspaper also located more victims who did not file a complaint from these schools and other schools in Vic oh Girona. Total, almost a hundred affected.
Indemnified
It is the first time in Spain that a religious organization publicly compensates victims of pedophilia without justice forcing it to do so. The law did not force the Marists to pay these former students because they were affected people who suffered crimes already prescribed. The teachers who perpetrated them have not been tried and, consequently, their victims had not been able to receive reparations. The insistence of manuel barbero, founder of Mans Petites and father of the former student with whom the Maristas Case started in February 2016, has been key to creating the reparation commission. The rest of the victims who did not take the step of contacting Mans Petites can still complain by going directly to the Marist institution, which told this newspaper that it would study each new case.
Made up of two psychologists who are experts in sexual violence – one chosen by Mans Petites and the other by the Marists – and a lawyer – proposed by Marists and accepted by Mans Petites – the commission won 31 former students contributed by Barbero. Six of these, however, finally resigned from participating. Interviews with the 25 who continued began at the headquarters of the Col·legi d’Advocats in February. Due to the pandemic they had to move to a Marist building. The two psychologists and the lawyer have given credibility to the stories – “shocking”, in some cases – of all of them, one correct admission of the abuses committed by teachers in their cloisters, both religious and lay brothers.
It has not been an internal investigation commission like those deployed by the Montserrat Abbey or the jesuits of cataloniawhen two cases broke out within them –both also investigated by this newspaper–, the purpose of which was to find out how many victims suffered abuse in their organizations and to take sanctioning measures against the aggressors but not compensate them financially. That of the Marists has done the opposite: it has not been driven with the purpose of punishing the brothers who remain under its tutelage, but yes it will repair those affected.
Agricultural repair
The agreement that Maristas and Mans Petites signed at the beginning of the year explicitly said that the amounts that the religious organization would pay as compensation to each of the recognized victims would take as a frame of reference real cases collected in jurisprudence. According to the ruling drawn up by the Barcelona Court against Benítez last spring, the most serious abuses committed by this teacher (repeated crimes with penetration) must be compensated with 60,000 euros and the most minor ones (touching), with 10,000 euros. They are insufficient quantities, in many cases. The total amount that the Marists will disburse around 400,000 euros. Some of the victims are satisfied with this gesture. For others, however, it is not enough to repair the damage caused or to extinguish the suspicion that the institution only seeks to clean up its reputation.
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In no case will this recognition have any impact on the 18 pedophiles that this newspaper has investigated. Only one of those who ended up being denounced during the ‘Marist case’, Joaquim BenitezHe has been tried and sentenced to 21 years in prison, although he has responded to four of the twenty complaints that were filed against him, the most recent, and still free waiting that his sentence is final. In the judicial process against Benítez, the role of the order was not investigated at any time.
This newspaper found evidence of systematic cover-up by the Marists in the past of teachers such as Arnaldo Farré, Feliu Marti, A.E., AB and lucio zudaire, among others. They ignored complaints filed against Farré; they changed brother AB’s school up to three times due to complaints from parents of abused children; They promoted Martí after promising a mother that he would be removed from the center; They discouraged AE from reporting AE’s touching to the police; or they took refuge in a colony house in Zudaire – where continued abusing critics– after removing him from Badalona due to family protests.
