“When we arrived, we arrived in little pieces, totally broken. And this man, I don’t know how he could submerge himself inside our head and how he has been recomposing our life. I say many times that Josean Echauri, my psychologist, has saved my life in many aspects. And for them to take it away from you overnight just because, for us it has been a tremendous blow.” The speaker is José Luis Pérez, the first person to raise his voice publicly in Navarra —he did it in the SER in 2019— to denounce the sexual abuse that both he and his brother suffered at the Padres Reparadores School-Seminary, in the Navarrese municipality of Puente La Reina.
In July of last year they were officially recognized as victims by the Government of Navarra. Throughout the process they have had a psychological care service offered by the Victim Assistance Office. Now, as confirmed by Echauri himself, co-founder of PSIMAE – the company awarded the therapeutic care service -, the General Directorate of Justice of the Regional Executive has made the decision to stop offering these therapeutic sessions to victims of serious crimes who have spent the longest time They have been receiving them. This includes the four complainants of sexual abuse from the Navarrese Church who still receive them, but also four other people.
“We were summoned a few weeks ago (end of September) to a meeting with members of the General Directorate of Justice in which they asked us to continue the service we have been providing until the new specifications were presented (a new contract will be tendered soon) . It is in this context that they gave us this instruction: that during this period until the new specifications and the new contract were to come out, we would discharge the people who had been in intervention, in treatments, and in any case, If they needed more assistance and more intervention, there was always the mental health service,” he explained.
The spokesperson for the Government of Navarra and Minister of Justice, Amparo López, has fervently denied that the Director General of Justice “has issued any instructions” in this regard. López insists that “no service has been stopped” and has expressed that “we will have to see who signs that communication (discharge) and why they sign it.” He has gone so far as to affirm that it was the “psychological professionals, who are the ones who provide the service, who, based on medical criteria, have made a communication.”
Some statements that Echauri, who is also the president of the Commission for Recognition of Victims of Abuse within the Catholic Churchhas denied in SER Navarra. The spokesperson has detailed that they are working on a new specification that will limit the sessions that adult victims of serious crimes can receive to 32, but that, until then, “the company that provides the service (PSIMAE) has to continue providing the service under the same conditions” as until now.
López insists that “the new document seeks to equalize all victims of serious crimes and increase the scope; “We want to reach more victims.” At this time, as confirmed by the service, there is no waiting list for therapeutic care in the Victims Office, so all those who require it are being attended to. Regarding the health criteria that set this limit of 32 sessions per victim, López has indicated that, in the last 20 years, 80% of victims have been discharged with less than 25 sessions and that “the people who “They have mentioned they have received around or more than 80 sessions.”
The news has fallen like a bucket of cold water on the victims of pedophilia within the Navarrese Church. It has affected them in a very important way because most of them have been cared for by Echauri himself for around three years. This is the case of Jesús Zudaire, president of AVA (Association of Victims of Abuse of Navarra)who explained that this decision is a blow to him because these therapies have helped him enormously. “I was diagnosed with shock post-traumatic and has done a lot of evaluations on me that have shown that many of the problems I have suffered in life have been a consequence of the abuse I suffered from the ages of 7 to 14. So, it’s a stick, it’s a big stick.”
Pérez, spokesperson for the second existing association in Navarra—Avipiren—has also criticized the ways in which the news has been communicated to them: “Overnight they have sent the order to the psychologists that the week they It comes, let’s be there, close the files and see you forever.” And he denounces: “Politically speaking, it has been very good for them on many occasions to go hand in hand with the victims of abuse and now, suddenly, I don’t know why they take it away from them. And what seems even more serious to me is that they get rid of not only the victims of abuse, but all types of victims.”
Restorative justice
The Executive insists that these victims will continue to have access to restorative justice procedures —Navarra is a pioneer in implementing them—and that they will have access to other parallel care services. However, victims of pedophilia rule out going to the public Mental Health network. “The first thing is because we know how the Mental Health network is. It is a Ferris wheel with screws that has nowhere to fall. They are not going to help us there because they are going to call us once every I don’t know how many months from a person who doesn’t know us and who has 200,000 cases. “So what, start with them again now?” Pérez asks.
In recent years, there have been more abuse complainants treated in the service, but they have been receiving the corresponding therapeutic discharges. Given that those that remain are a very small percentage of the total number of cases attended to in the Victims Office of the Government of Navarra, Pérez claims to not understand what difference it can make for the public coffers to continue providing them with this attention.
EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Spanish Church in 2018 and has a database updated with all known cases. If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to us at: [email protected]. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: [email protected].
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