Breaking silence, facing barriers: Two sides of justice in Latin America
For survivors of institutional child sexual abuse, attempts to seek justice can have starkly different outcomes. This article looks at two recent cases of clergy abuse in Latin America, comparing the progress being made in Bolivia to a regression in Argentina, where the Supreme Court overturned one of the country’s most significant convictions.
Across Latin America, survivors of childhood sexual abuse are leading efforts to end cycles of impunity. While most sexual violence is perpetrated inside the home, it also happens behind the closed doors of institutions - and, in Latin America, no other institution has faced as many abuse complaints as the Catholic Church. Through their courage, survivors have brought unprecedented convictions against Latin American church figures - from local priests to archbishops, to cardinals who concealed the abuse. Survivors are proving that justice is possible when they mobilise, break the silence and fight for accountability.
At the same time, many survivors continue to face significant barriers that prevent them from accessing justice. Among the most damaging of these barriers are statutes of limitations (SoLs), also known as limitation periods. SoLs place a limit on the number of years a survivor has to make a complaint against their abuser. With most survivors taking decades to come to terms with and report their abuse (a process known as “delayed disclosure”) - whether because of trauma, fear, stigma or a lack of support - SoLs can erase accountability simply because a survivor ‘took too long’ to disclose. While the number of Latin American countries that have abolished limitation periods is increasing, it is still an ongoing problem for survivors in countries like Argentina.
This article looks at two recent cases of clergy abuse in Latin America, comparing the progress being made in Bolivia to a recent ruling in Argentina, where the Supreme Court overturned one of the country’s most significant convictions, putting a spotlight on the damage that SoLs do to survivors.
Breaking the silence: A historic step forward in Bolivia
On 2 September 2025, a Bolivian court sentenced two Spanish Jesuit priests, Marcos Recolons and Ramón Alaix, to one year in prison. They were convicted of covering up decades of child sexual abuse committed by fellow priest Alfonso Pedrajas. While the sentence was criticised for being “very short”, the case is unprecedented in Bolivia because it marks the first time that high-ranking Jesuit officials have been criminally convicted for concealing clergy abuse in the country’s history. Importantly, the judge also ordered prosecutors to widen the investigation to include all actors linked to the case - including other Jesuits in Bolivia, other church officials who were aware of the abuses and other surviving perpetrators.
The national survivors’ network, Comunidad Boliviana de Sobrevivientes (CBS) - one of CRIN’s partners in the Latin America project to end institutional child sexual abuse - played a central role throughout the legal process, litigating the case and ensuring that survivors’ voices remained at the forefront. After the verdict, CBS issued a statement welcoming the conviction, emphasising how their fight was about establishing the truth. Its president, Wilder Flores, hailed the decision as the “beginning” of a long-awaited path toward justice. Just days later, CBS organised a rally in Cochabamba’s main square, where survivors and allies celebrated the convictions together. For them, the ruling represented a historic victory and a source of collective empowerment.
The case received widespread national and international coverage (El País, Reuters, Associated Press, France 24), with leading outlets reporting on the verdict and focusing on the survivors’ role in achieving it. Many described the ruling as “groundbreaking”, underlining both the precedent it sets in Bolivia and the momentum it gives for conducting more and broader investigations into clergy abuse.
This momentum is not present across all of Latin America, however. In one country in particular, the survivors’ fight hit a major obstacle this year.
Facing barriers: Statutes of limitations in Argentina
Argentina has seen many reports and convictions against abusive clergy, but access to justice remains a challenge for survivors whose cases can no longer be heard by courts (because their statute of limitations (SoL) has expired). In Argentina, a legal reform set the SoLs for child sexual abuse cases committed after 2015 at up to twelve years, starting from the moment the victim files charges as an adult. However, SoLs continue to deny justice to survivors of child sexual abuse - and a recent decision in the case of Justo José Ilarraz in Argentina shows that it is a stark example of the need for legal reforms.
Ilarraz, a former priest in the city of Paraná, abused at least seven seminarians aged between 12 and 15 years old between the mid-1980s and early 1990s. After years of silence, survivors finally managed to report the abuse and bring the case to trial. In 2018, Ilarraz was sentenced to 25 years in prison for corruption of minors and aggravated sexual abuse.
In July 2025, only seven years into his sentence, Argentina’s Supreme Court overturned the conviction of Ilarraz in a controversial decision. The Court declared the case prescribed and acquitted him, ruling that the alleged abuses could not be considered crimes against humanity or serious human rights violations under international law. It emphasised that the statute of limitations remained in force, since SoLs are part of substantive criminal law and protected by the principle of legality, which prevents retroactive extension to the defendant’s detriment. As one of the most well-known child abuse cases in Argentina, the ruling received considerable media coverage, both nationally (El Litoral, Infobae, La Nación, Clarín, La Izquierda Diario, Pagina 12, Perfil) and internationally (El Pais, Swissinfo).
The decision not only ended Ilarraz’s case but also set a dangerous precedent. Since then, other priests accused of abuse have already avoided trial by invoking the same argument of expired SoLs, causing a domino effect of impunity. In response to the ruling, the country’s ecclesiastical abuse survivors’ network, Red de Sobrevivientes de Abusos Eclesiásticos de Argentina, declared: “Limitation periods do not signify innocence. They signify impunity.”
Recognising that SoLs deepen survivors’ suffering and serve to protect perpetrators, international human rights bodies have long recognised that child sexual abuse requires a different legal approach, one that recognises the long time it can take survivors of these particular crimes to disclose. For instance, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) urged Argentina this year to lift statutes of limitations for child sexual abuse cases, stressing that these laws deny children’s right to justice.
A tale of two countries
CRIN wants to highlight the two contrasting realities of survivors of child sexual abuse in Latin America. On one hand, the Bolivian court ruling against Jesuit officials marks a historic milestone, showing how survivor-led efforts can break cycles of silence, secure accountability, and build momentum for broader systemic change. On the other hand, Argentina’s Supreme Court decision in the Ilarraz case exposes the devastating impact of statutes of limitations, which continue to shield perpetrators from accountability.
Taken together, these stories underscore both the progress and the setbacks in the region: justice is possible when survivors mobilise, but accountability also requires dismantling structural barriers like statutes of limitations that perpetuate impunity. The path forward demands that legal systems adapt to the realities of child sexual abuse, ensuring that it’s never ‘too late’ for a survivor to speak the truth.