Spanish sex abuse victims speak out

▶ Accusations against priests begin to mount in Spain

A trickle of accusations of sexual abuse against priests in schools and seminaries is starting to erode the wall of silence in Catholic Spain, whose Church representatives are set to attend a major Vatican meeting on child protection.

“This is only the tip of the iceberg,” warned Miguel Hurtado, who recently made his case public.

“They’re not ready for the tsunami that is coming,” the 36-year-old said defiantly.

For 20 years, Hurtado stayed quiet, trying to come to terms with the abuse he suffered when he joined a boy scout troup at the Santa Maria de Montserrat Abbey, which sits high up in jagged mountains northwest of Barcelona.

His alleged abuser, whom Hurtado accuses of fondling him for a year, was a charismatic monk who founded the group and died in 2008.

“I would have reported it earlier but I was a kid and I was too scared,” said Hurtado, who revealed his accusations in a Netflix documentary on abuse in Spain’s Church.

“The secret was killing me and I needed to come out with the truth, whether people believed me or not.”

Since then, nine others have come out to allege they were victims of the same monk and fresh accusations have emerged in religious schools in the Basque Country, various Catalan parishes and in a college in Barcelona. Even the soccer world was affected. On Thursday, Atletico Madrid said it had parted ways with a former monk who once trained its young players after he acknowledged having sexually abused one of his students in the 1970s.

The heads of around 100 bishops’ conferences from every continent will convene from Thursday to Sunday for the Vatican meeting on the protection of minors.

As scandals erupted in countries like the US, Ireland and Australia, complaints in Spain were few and far between despite the Church’s loss of influence over the years, particularly with younger generations.

Hurtado believes this was down to how Spaniards deal with trauma in general.

“For example, we have dealt with the traumas of the [1936-39] civil war and the [ensuing] dictatorship via omission,” he says.

“Forgiving and forgetting as it’s part of the past. Leaving it all hidden.”