Currently are documented
146
CASES DENOUNCED
516
VICTIMS
If you are aware of a case that has not been reported or you want to add new information to those already published, you can write to us at the email: [email protected]
Please note that the presumption of innocence applies to anyone until a possible final sentence. That means until the outcome of the third degree of judgment issued by the Supreme Court of Cassation.
The Left database documenting abuse cases against minors in the Italian Catholic Church is the first in Italy realized by a news publisher.
PEDOPHILIA IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH. THE ITALIAN CASES
The archive has been online since Friday, February 18th, with the first 61 cases surveyed (among priests denounced or definitively sentenced) and 182 victims (presumed/ascertained). However – provided that the presumption of innocence applies to everyone until the eventual condemnation in a definitive way – more than 300 events are already submitted to verification and in course of publication.
Edited by Federico Tulli.
The violence of an adult against a child is defined by psychiatrists and psychotherapists as «a psychic murder». However, our country is the only one in the world where the Church and secular institutions (Government, Parliament) never wanted to carry out a nationwide investigation to shed light on a criminal phenomenon that unfortunately has spread throughout the Peninsula for decades, at least.
DFor some time now, we at Left have been calling for the establishment of a parliamentary committee of inquiry into pedophilia in the Italian Church, such as the very relevant committee on femicide, already active. But our appeal has remained incredibly unanswered, at least until now.
We, therefore, want to make up for this serious lack of information with our online archive. A lack that is also an unacceptable disregard on the part of politics and institutions for the safety and psychophysical health of children.
Realized working on original sources, on agency and journalistic sources, the database indicates, where it is possible to make it known, the name of the priest denounced/ convicted, the crime in question, the known number of victims, the year in which the contested offense was committed, the date on which the case became known, the diocese to which it belonged, the possible canonical sanction suffered by the ecclesiastic.
A counter will keep the count of the priests involved and their victims up to date, while part of the site will be dedicated to the storage of journalistic sources and documents certifying the complaint, the investigation, any procedural process, and any final conviction of the offender.
The objective is to provide the public opinion with an overview of the Italian situation to put pressure on politics and institutions. This is to put in place all the necessary measures to prevent further violence – pedophilia is notoriously a serial crime – and to provide all the necessary psychological assistance to the victims.
The archive will then be accompanied by surveys, interviews, analysis, and reflections with the contribution of experts from various disciplines to explain in clear and informative language: what pedophilia is, in particular, that of the ecclesiastical matrix, who is the pedophile, what are the consequences for the victim, what to do if you become aware of alleged violence suffered by a child, who to turn to and who NOT to turn to for report an abuse.
And then again, as an example, we will tell how the Concordat with the Catholic Church interferes with the prosecution of the judiciary, and we will take stock of the application of the Lanzarote Convention and the violations contested by the UN to Italy regarding the Convention on the protection of the childhood and adolescence.
Even Spain, in recent weeks, has taken note of the impossibility of continuing to deny the horror, thanks mainly to the input of a powerful survey of the newspaper El Pais. The move has taken its cue, not by chance, from the creation of a database published on its website. The surveys that in recent months have shaken France and Germany have come to a similar result to the ones achieved by all the surveys of this type carried out in the last 15 years in the world in almost all countries with a strong Catholic presence: Ireland, United States, Australia, Belgium, Holland, to only name a few.
In fact, it has been determined that pedophilia is an endemic phenomenon in the Catholic Church and that only by facing it with an open face, without deception, without ulterior motives, only to shed light once and for all, and with a clear understanding of what it means for a child to be raped by an adult he has been led to trust, can we begin to think that we can eradicate the violent from an environment that has been around for decades, or perhaps for centuries, that thought first of all to preserve the public image of the religious institution from scandals that it could hardly justify.
It will be our journalist Federico Tulli, author of numerous investigations on Left and several books on the subject, to edit this database. He will make use of direct testimony, original documents, journalistic sources, the collaboration of experts in various disciplines – lawyers, psychiatrists, psychotherapists, historians, magistrates, psychologists – and the collaboration of the only existing non-profit organization in Italy that deals with the protection of the rights of victims and survivors of ecclesiastical rape – Rete L’Abuso. It is thanks to the precious archive of the association, founded by Francesco Zanardi in 2010, that today there is an initial mapping of pedophile crimes in the Italian dioceses from which it emerges that at least 300 priests have been reported in the last 20 years. It is our firm intention to go all the way through these stories and check if there are others, something we already know we can not exclude, unfortunately.
Traduzione a cura di Alessia Gasparini
If you are aware of a case that has not been reported or you want to add new information to those already published, you can write to us at the email: [email protected]
