Another Catholic church’s child sex abuse crimes have now come to light in Portugal after a commission investigating child sexual abuse in the Portuguese Catholic Church found more than 200 alleged victims.
As per reports, the victims are already been in touch to share their stories since its launch a month ago. and the abuse allegations have come from people born between 1933 and 2006, from every region of the country, and also from Portuguese nationals living abroad like Canada, France, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
However, many of the victims who have shared their testimonies also mentioned other children who might have been abused by the same person, the commission said in a statement on Thursday.
“The allegations reveal suffering … which, in some cases, has been hidden for decades,” the commission said. “For many, this is the first time they are breaking their silence.”
In early January last year, a commission in France revealed, approximately 3,000 priests and religious officials sexually abused more than 200,000 children during the past 70 years.
That report has now put a lot of pressure on prominent Portuguese Catholics to lift the veil of silence and coverup that had surrounded the issue for decades.
Portuguese church officials said authorities started an investigation two years ago and only about a dozen allegations of sexual abuse involving Portuguese priests since 2001. But more than half of those cases were dropped because church investigators concluded there was not enough evidence to pursue them.
The six-person lay committee said that it had received reports from 214 people during its first month of work and in a statement, the committee said, “This suffering is associated with feelings of shame, fear, guilt, and self-exclusion,”.
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