"Three Jesuits from the Casp school abused me"

The news about the Jesuit school on Casp street in Barcelona, ​​where numerous students suffered for 30 years from the "inappropriate behavior" of the religious Cesc Peris, nicknamed Sex Penis, has unleashed an avalanche of complaints about other teachers.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
24 May 2023 Wednesday 22:22
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"Three Jesuits from the Casp school abused me"

The news about the Jesuit school on Casp street in Barcelona, ​​where numerous students suffered for 30 years from the "inappropriate behavior" of the religious Cesc Peris, nicknamed Sex Penis, has unleashed an avalanche of complaints about other teachers. As a result of the information, the Society of Jesus has asked for forgiveness, has announced "forceful" measures and has assumed "the bad practices of the past".

The mea culpa satisfies the 234 former students who signed a letter against Cesc Peris in search of transparency. “We have stirred consciences”, they say, although “we have to get to the bottom”. El País collected testimonies the day before yesterday against eight Jesuits from Casp between the fifties and eighties. To them we must add three more, which appear in a complaint before the Cremades law firm

This law firm has been commissioned by the Episcopal Conference for an audit on cases of pedophilia in the Church. His work raises doubts among the victims, who are suspicious of the independence of auditors without access to church archives. Even so, the cabinet has received numerous complaints, such as that of V., a 71-year-old doctor, already retired and a student of the Casp Jesuits between 1959 and 1968.

The complaint was filed on March 15, 2022, more than a year and two months ago. "In all this time, no one from the Episcopal Conference, the Society of Jesus or the school has called me to ask for forgiveness," explains the complainant, who telephoned the firm at the beginning of the month to demand an explanation. "They were very kind to me, but they didn't tell me anything specific because they haven't finished the report yet."

The complaint cites with names and surnames whom we will identify here as "brother C." and “parents P.L.C. and A.P.P. “He was a scapegoat: a pious, devoted, shy child ...”, explains V., who studied the preparatory course, the entrance, the six years of high school and the pre-university in Casp. He entered with 6 years. The first Jesuit who abused him at that age gave him prizes so he would let himself be groped.

What prizes? "He named me captain of the Crusades and allowed me to act as an altar boy, something that in my innocence as a child was the summum of honours." Military jargon was common at that time: captain of the Crusades, brigades... The religious in question was the watchman, the head of the brigade of the three or four classes of the smallest, who were grouped together and were under his custody when they studied or they did their homework.

What most surprised the childish mind of the complainant were the lurid questions that he was asked and that he did not understand, such as the insistence on knowing if he touched himself and how he did it. When V. has met with former schoolmates and the subject has come up, he has discovered that it was not happening only to him. "At least four or five companions have recognized the same facts and with the same or other Jesuits, like Father R.".

The second episode of abuse occurred when he was 13 years old and he was harassed by a maestrillo, a trainee teacher, who was already wearing a cassock and had received minor orders but was not yet a priest. “He talked to me all day about sex. She came to my house to take me out several times, something that intrigued my mother, although neither she nor I ever dared to express our fears.

I was a child in a very religious home. That is what hurts the most. His mother had a nun sister and two priest brothers (one of them a well-known Jesuit who was in Bolivia). In the Society of Jesus they know perfectly well who you are and have never contacted him, not even when he filed the complaint with the law firm hired by the Church. He also wrote a letter to the Vatican, still no response.

The third episode was the most serious. Another pedophile in a cassock, who was teaching history, tried to rape him with the excuse of showing him "the love of God." Fortunately, V. was no longer the child of 1959. He was 16 years old, he knew what that man wanted and he sent him to fry asparagus. That's how it all ended. Just? The drama, revived these days by the news of the Jesuit case and by so many years of silence from the Church, had only just begun.

“I am 71 years old, I am a doctor and even today I need psychological therapy. I have lived with major depression, diagnosed, and with anxiolytics, antidepressant drugs and psychiatric control. For a long time I suffered from panic attacks and sexual identity problems. He believes that the Church “neither consoles nor wants to repair the damage caused. Or, put another way, you don't want to spend a penny on compensation.

But I don't want money. I want something simpler and much more satisfying for me: someone to call me and say I'm sorry. He has waited in vain for those apologies since 1959, when he was a pious, devout and shy boy. He could not begin to undo the knot that grips him until his mother passed away in 2012. Despite the backpack he has carried since childhood, he does not consider himself a brave man, "rather lucky."

Lucky? “Of course, I studied medicine and practiced a wonderful profession for many years. I have married and I have an incredible partner, who knows everything about my past. I am lucky for that and because I knew how to look forward, without falling into the addictions that other people fell into with a backpack as heavy as mine or even worse. With depression and anguish, yes, but without taking a wrong step or doing anything irreparable.

The form that Cremades

(Email of the author: dmarchena@lavanguardia.es)