Why CRIN is supporting clergy abuse survivors in Latin America to challenge impunity

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CRIN is merely a single organisation that’s supporting survivor-led networks to pursue an end to impunity for institutional child sexual abuse. But if their demands and needs are to be met, they must receive support and allyship from groups beyond CRIN and our funders. To this end, we’re sharing the thinking behind why and how we’re working with survivors’ networks in Latin America in the hope that more organisations will join the growing movement. 

Background and premise

CRIN’s work on clergy abuse and access to justice for survivors began in 2013 when we published a global report on the issue ahead of the United Nations’ review of the Holy See’s children’s rights record. Clergy abuse scandals were first exposed en masse in North America followed by Europe and Oceania, with the UN review marking a historic moment of reckoning and accountability for systemic abuse, cover-ups and impunity worldwide. 

Mapping the scale of clergy abuse in Latin America

Five years on, Latin America was emerging as the potential site of a global ‘third wave’ of clergy abuse scandals, as complaints increased exponentially in some countries. We responded by mapping clergy abuse across Latin America and reviewing each country’s laws on the sexual abuse of children, recognising that challenging abuse and impunity first requires a acknowledgement of the scale and nature of the violence before any reform can take place. It was the first study of the issue in the region as a whole and prompted coverage and debate regionwide. 

Recognising a gap in political will and survivor-led networks

Awareness of the issue in Latin America has indeed increased in recent years. Cases have emerged in every country, which has helped to change the discourse from blaming a few ‘bad apples’ to recognising the systemic nature of the problem. Despite this, the region has not seen the same level of systemic accountability or legal reform to ensure justice for survivors as we’ve seen elsewhere in the world. We think this situation is due to two main factors: a lack of political will by national governments and a lack of survivor-led mobilisation in each country. This view is based on our awareness that in every country that has responded to the institutional abuse of children, survivors have always been the ones to instigate calls for a national inquiry, redress schemes and law reform. Particularly the campaigning and awareness-raising work they do has been key to pushing the issue into the political arena where these actions are approved. So we know that without survivors mobilising and demanding truth, justice and reparations, the political will to make these things happen is usually absent. 

Growing calls for accountability across the region

But there are clear signs that Latin America is moving towards broad regional reform. Six countries - Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Chile and Colombia - have all abolished criminal limitation periods for childhood sexual abuse, with similar discussions now taking place in Argentina and Mexico. Calls for independent national inquiries on institutional child abuse, including in the Catholic Church, have so far been made in Chile, Ecuador and Mexico. And international legal advocacy is currently being considered by survivors in several countries in the region. These developments are a long time coming and it’s important to maintain this momentum because we know that abuse gets worse and impunity spreads when oversight decreases. 

What we plan to do and why

Within this context, our aim is to go from scandal to reform - to follow up our research with practical actions that aim to end impunity for institutional child sexual abuse in Latin America. With this in mind, we have identified three long-term objectives: 

1. Supporting the development of survivor-led networks across Latin America, so that governments can no longer ignore their demands for truth, justice and redress; 

2. Pursuing the establishment of national inquiries, as they create a public historical account of institutional abuse, which can even lead to broad reforms and the creation of redress schemes; and 

3. Supporting proposals for national law reform to ensure access to justice for survivors of child sexual abuse, including through the reform of statutes of limitations, the development of mandatory reporting of alleged abuse, and the redefinition of offences where relevant. 

Supporting the development of survivor-led networks

Despite cases of clergy abuse emerging in every country in Latin America, the visibility of the issue remains uneven across the region. This isn’t because the scale of abuse in each country varies dramatically, but because local dynamics - such as reverence for the Catholic Church, social taboos, a lack of media coverage of the issue, not having a national survivors’ network - all influence how many survivors come forward. What’s needed then is for the visibility of the issue to increase more evenly across Latin America, for which the presence of mobilised survivors is key.  

For this reason, we’re supporting the development of both existing and emerging survivor-led networks, each of which are looking for different kinds of support. For some, it’s about developing advocacy, including through partnerships, while others are working out how to establish a survivors' network from scratch. What they have in common, however, is their desire to transition from informal support groups to organised national campaigns. 

Offering practical and financial support where it’s needed

Any support, however, first requires a recognition of the networks’ current capacity and the resources they need to pursue their goals. Fundamentally, this calls for plain acknowledgement that survivor-led networks in Latin America are volunteer-based groups, and as such, have limited capacity and resources, which inhibits their full potential for advocacy and campaigning. Accordingly, as a necessary element to our collaboration, we offer sub-grants to the survivors’ networks that we partner with in order to - as one network put it - “ease” their ability to work. The amounts allocated are democratically agreed through deliberation with the survivors’ networks, as we aim to make the process participatory and based on mutual trust and accountability. In addition, we provide support that responds to any training needs, such as on digital and physical security, practical guides on how to advocate for reform and national inquiries, and private online workshops that allow them to meet with experts and fellow networks abroad. 

Connecting survivors for cross-country solidarity, beyond language barriers

Also key to choosing the right type of support is recognising who is best placed to provide it. And it isn’t always CRIN. Often, it’s survivors themselves. With some survivors’ networks around the world having already successfully campaigned for national inquiries, redress schemes and legal reform, there is considerable potential for cross-country learning and solidarity between survivors’ networks in Latin America and those abroad. We therefore connect survivors’ networks in Latin America with experienced campaigners on this issue from around the world.

What has prevented this from happening previously is primarily the language barrier, which is one of the main reasons survivors' networks aren't better connected worldwide - an issue which relates back to the lack of financial resources the networks often struggle with, as interpretation and event coordination demands resources. We address this barrier by organising for simultaneous interpretation to be a regular part of these exchanges, and having a budget specifically for this. There is also potential for emerging survivors’ networks in Latin America to learn from the more experienced ones within the region. The general aim here is to foster collaboration between survivors’ networks based on mutual goals and regardless of their location and language. 

Supporting the development of national inquiries and legal reform

Our research into clergy abuse in Latin America showed that impunity is widespread. While we found convictions of abusive priests in every country in the region, these are few and far between, and overall only a relatively small number of cases have come to light if we compare them to estimates in countries outside Latin America. 

Drastically lower visibility of the issue across the region 

While we tallied more than 1,000 abuse complaints across the region, single-country figures abroad are far higher. Australia’s Royal Commission into institutional sexual abuse against children received 4,444 complaints covering 35 years, and France’s national inquiry into clergy abuse estimated there were 333,000 child victims over a 70-year period. This is in addition to estimates that ten percent of Brazil’s clergy and 14 percent of New Zealand’s have committed sexual abuse, figures which rise to 40 percent within some religious orders. And with Latin America having the largest Catholic population in the world, these figures could exist in other countries in the region. The scale of abuse in each country therefore needs to be uncovered, and such figures mainly come about thanks to initiatives like independent national inquiries. 

Learning from national inquiries that have driven change elsewhere

Drawing on the experiences from jurisdictions in other regions is useful for setting out the strategic direction of advocacy in Latin America, where large-scale truth and justice initiatives have not yet happened. Looking at countries abroad, many governments have responded to institutional sexual abuse of children by establishing independent national inquiries, which both CRIN and the Latin American survivors’ networks see as a powerful mechanism for establishing an official public historical account - which is especially necessary in countries where the issue has been covered up, minimised or ignored - as well for triggering legal reform, accountability, and justice and redress for survivors.

Yet no country in Latin America has yet conducted an independent national inquiry into child sexual abuse, despite the region having an impressive history of large-scale investigations into past human rights violations in the form of truth commissions. There have been a number of parliamentary inquiries into the issue, but these are smaller in scale and generally lack the legal powers to fully investigate accused institutions. Promising signs have emerged in countries where either survivors, lawmakers or experts have proposed independent national inquiries, such as in Chile, Ecuador and Mexico, and where calls for legal reform or draft laws already exist, such as in Argentina and Mexico. 

Our work aims to support these leads in a variety of ways, as it’s through a holistic approach that we can accelerate their development collectively. For instance, we connect the Latin American networks with those in other continents who can share their experience of successfully campaigning for national inquiries and legal reform. We produce research and advocacy guides in Spanish that help to inform the survivors’ networks’ strategies and advocacy. Where necessary, we assist in key legal cases that have the potential to shift the status quo, such as in challenging the statute of limitations. We collaborate with journalists who cover clergy abuse and to promote the work and demands of abuse survivors. Jointly with the networks, we make submissions to international human rights bodies to bring pressure on States to establish reform and inquiries. And because all of this requires time and resources, the financial support we provide the survivors’ networks supports them in committing time to their advocacy and campaigning activities. 

The goal is to end impunity for sexual violence against children in religious institutions, which has the potential to trigger broader reform to prevent child sexual abuse in all settings and ensure access to justice for all survivors. Building sufficient political support for national inquiries and law reform can take years, but it’s by building the foundations alongside the networks spearheading the demands that we can get closer to the goal. 

A survivor-centred approach based on participation, transparency and anti-oppression

It goes without saying that this work would not exist without the presence of the survivor-led networks. And as with all of CRIN’s work, partnerships are essential because no single organisation or sector has all the expertise and capacity necessary to prevent sexual violence against children and to end impunity. But in working with survivor-led groups that operate at the grassroots level in Latin America, we are acutely aware that as an international Western organisation based in Europe, there is a history of NGO colonialism, oppression, paternalism and a power imbalance that we cannot ignore. By working within this context, that comes with stereotypes and in which impressions matter, we strive to overcome this by making our processes participatory, transparent and based on principles of anti-oppression. Part of this means communicating with the survivors’ networks in their language, adapting to their time zone, being flexible to their ways and pace of working, following their lead rather than imposing or prescribing ours, having joint decision-making about project design and budget, and being cognisant of the impact that any extra work can have on their already-limited resources and, importantly, responding to that impact so they are not at a disadvantage. 

CRIN’s role in supporting the survivors’ networks is therefore precisely about support, as we do not prescribe a set model for collaboration or a strict idea on what activities the networks should do in order to avoid ones that are time-consuming or of little benefit to them. Instead, any support given is decided jointly based on one-to-one conversations with each network and responds to their particular needs and goals. This is because survivors’ networks - with their lived experience and on-the-ground expertise - are best placed to define their own demands, objectives and methods. 

This type of collaboration therefore requires CRIN to not only know its place, but to play to its strengths to make sure that the partnership is useful to the survivors’ networks and builds on their existing work. In other words, what’s CRIN’s added value in an issue on which grassroots networks have already been campaigning for years? As an international human rights policy and advocacy organisation, CRIN’s added value lies in our legal, research and international human rights expertise; in our reputation and influence as a respected and established NGO; in our connections with a global network of activists, organisations and institutions; and in our appreciation of how countries across regions can follow one another’s reforms, how experienced survivors’ networks can inform the activities of newer ones, and how ally organisations like CRIN and others can help. 

In collaborating with Latin America’s survivor-led networks, we’re combining our expertise and resources with the lived experience and national knowledge of survivor-led groups. This is a recognition that we are more effective when we each play to our respective strengths, and a respect for our duty to follow the lead of survivor-led groups themselves, in solidarity. 

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