The Ombudsman's report includes numerous testimonies of boys, girls and teenagers who were sexually assaulted by religious people whom they trusted because they were their guardians, because they represented God, because they were friends of their parents, because they had received them with scholarships in seminars... The chosen victims were, almost always, the most vulnerable. Their testimonies reveal their deep helplessness, incomprehension, fear and paralysis that they lived.
God's representative
"I did what he told me, because to me he was like God. He had to protect me, he was like my safe. He said he was praying to God for me and that God would give me everything I needed. Sucking his penis was nothing compared to getting what I needed from God."
The most needy
12-year-old boy: "One day yes and one day no, depending on when he came, because he came almost every day, he threw me on the bed and snorted, snorted. What I was thinking was that this is the price I have to pay for this man to put you in a school for cool kids. I thought about it from the first day: 'I'm in a fancy school, you'll have to pay something'".
threats
"I was looking for excuses not to go, but I would blackmail you with anything. That I would call my parents because my behavior was not appropriate, that I was lying, that I did not study, that my grades were bad... And it cost the parents a lot of money and effort, a real sacrifice, because all [the five children ] we studied. I was tied to the topic of my parents."
The school, the seminary
"They showed us films in the auditorium almost every week. Curiously, he always sent me to the last row [...]. They would sit behind me and this priest would come behind, always in the middle, with me next to him. The lights went out and he hugged me. We were wearing shorts. It started at the knee and reached your parts, your penis. One of the times, he took my hands and brought them to his thighs and to his penis. And my hands weren't the only ones there, there was another child."
12-year-old boy: “I went through the door calmly, and even excited, since our tutor told us that this person would listen to us to help us. All these expectations were twisted when this man, without even saying hello, said to me: 'Take your clothes off'. He told me to come over for a first assessment [...]. Then I felt a terrible pain and stinging at the entrance of the anus. He was trying to insert his finger and it hurt terribly. I straightened up as best I could and turned to look at him. At this point I still didn't understand anything and I touched my butt area. It was wet, it was greasy and it smelled very bad...".
9-year-old boy: "Sometimes we stayed upright, and at other times he threw me on the sofa [...] I was paralyzed at his mercy. I remember feeling disgusted when he brought his mouth to mine and felt his uncontrolled animal breath. Almost always, while I was held and trapped, he rubbed against me [...]. It was when I felt his penis hard against my body and his rapid breathing of ecstasy".
The catechesis
9-year-old girl: “My older sister used to take me to catechesis (post-communion) [...]. One day we were several children in a semicircle, in children's chairs. And this man was in front. And suddenly he took my chair and put his hands inside my vagina, and then he brought my hand to his penis, which was flaccid under the cassock [...]”.
'I do it for you'
"He sold it as if it was for your own good, so that you would develop properly, the body... And it was always the same, masturbation, 'oops, you have released very little semen, you should grow more to release more, look how much what do I get out of it'".
Excursions
12-year-old boy: "They went on excursions, with a few [...]. We left with something to eat and with tents to sleep one night. He used the opportunity to get into some of the tents [...], I noticed that he rubbed himself... They took two or three tents, because he had to leave the person he was going to rape alone, without company, in a tent" .
