LIVE Evacuation order issued for some Fort McMurray neighbourhoods as wildfire nears
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Spain's first official probe of sex abuse by clergy members or other people connected to the Catholic Church in the country included a survey that indicated that the number of victims could run into hundreds of thousands.
The survey was part of a damning report by the office of Spain's ombudsman, or "defensor del pueblo," following an 18-month independent investigation of 487 cases involving alleged victims who spoke with the ombudsman's team.
Ombudsman Angel Gabilondo criticized the church's response to sex abuse scandals, saying it had often been to minimize if not deny the problem. He presented the nearly 800-page report to the speaker of the Spanish parliament's lower house Friday and then to reporters.
"This is a necessary report to respond to a situation of suffering and loneliness that for years has remained, in one way or another, covered by an unfair silence," Gabilondo said in a statement,
He acknowledged that the church had taken steps to address both abuse by priests and efforts to cover up the scandal, but said they were not enough.
Included in the report were findings from a survey based on 8,000 valid phone and online responses. The poll said 1.13% of the Spanish adults questioned said they were abused as children by either priests or lay members of the church, including teachers at religious schools. Of those, 0.6% identified their abusers as clergy members.
Given that Spain's adult population stands close to 39 million, that would mean some 440,000 minors could have been sexually abused by Roman Catholic priests, members of a religious order and lay members of the church in recent decades.
The survey conducted by GAD3, a well-known opinion pollster in Spain, had a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.
The ombudsman's investigation represents Spain's first official probe of the child sex abuse problem that has undermined the Catholic Church around the world, and the estimate from the survey is the first time such a high number of possible victims was identified in the country.
The survey, conducted by GAD3, a well-known opinion pollster in Spain, had a margin of sampling error for all respondents of plus or minus 1.1 percentage points.
Ombudsman Angel Gabilondo did not extrapolate the survey findings into a count of possible victims but said the percentages were in line with similar reports in other European countries.
An investigative commission in France, which has a population of nearly 68 million compared to Spain's 47.6 million, estimated based on surveys two years ago that some 330,000 minors had been abused by church personnel over 70 years.
The report calls for a public event to recognize victims, the creation of a state fund to pay compensation and for the Catholic Church to provide a way to help victims in the recovery process and introduce reforms to prevent abuse and compensate victims.
Spain's parliament voted in March 2022 to open the country's first official investigation by the ombudsman into the extent of sexual abuse committed by priests and church authorities.
The government was forced to act after Spanish newspaper El Pais published abuse allegations involving more than 1,200 victims, provoking public outrage.
Acting Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described the report as a "milestone" for Spain's democracy.
"Today we are a little better as a country, " Sanchez said Friday from Brussels. "Because a reality has been made known that everyone has known for many years, but which no one spoke of."
He said the report and its recommendations would be studied and acted upon.
Spain's Stolen Childhood abuse survivors' group collaborated with the ombudsman's office on the report. Juan Cuatrecasas, a co-founder of the group, said the final document was " positive" but it remained to be seen how lawmakers respond to the recommendations.
He said the report covered a time period that between the 1960s up until recent years.
Miguel Hurtado, who was representing an international group called Ending Clergy Abuse, called the report "disappointing" and inferior in its scope and conclusions to ones produced in Australia or Ireland.
Hurtado said the only effective model would be a truth commission with coercive investigative powers.
The Spanish Bishops' Conference is scheduled to meet Monday to consider the ombudsman's report.
A Madrid-based law firm is conducting a parallel inquiry ordered by the bishops' conference. Its findings are expected to be released later this year.
Only a handful of countries have had government-initiated or parliamentary inquiries into clergy sex abuse.
------
Aritz Parra in Madrid and Nicole Winfield in Rome contributed to this report.
Four Fort McMurray neighbourhoods were ordered to evacuate as a wildfire gets closer to the city.
Canadian LifeLabs customers who filed an application for a class-action settlement began receiving their payments this week, though at a much lower amount than initially expected.
Nobel laureate Alice Munro, the Canadian literary giant who became one of the world's most esteemed contemporary authors and one of history's most honoured short story writers, has died at age 92.
The doctor who led Toronto through the COVID-19 pandemic as the city’s top public health official is stepping down.
Wildfires have led Environment Canada to issue air quality advisories for parts of B.C., Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories, as forecasters warn the smoke could drift farther east.
Saskatchewan RCMP have revealed that a historic sexual assault investigation has led to the discovery of alleged crimes against children dating back to 2005.
An American accused of sexually assaulting a Pennsylvania college student in 2013 and later sending her a Facebook message that said, 'So I raped you,' has been detained in France after a three-year search.
The annual list of Canada's top restaurants in the country was just released and here are the places that made the 2024 cut.
Ontario Provincial Police are responding to a fatal collision involving two vehicles on Highway 417 in Ottawa's west end on Tuesday morning.
A team is ready to help an entangled North Atlantic right whale in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
A $200 reward is being offered by a North Vancouver family for the safe return of their beloved chicken, Snowflake.
Two daughters and a mother were reunited online 40 years later thanks to a DNA kit and a Zoom connection despite living on three separate continents and speaking different languages.
Mother's Day can be a difficult occasion for those who have lost or are estranged from their mom.
YES Theatre Young Company opened its acclaimed kids’ show, One Small Step, at Sudbury Theatre Centre on Saturday.
An Ottawa pizzeria is being recognized as one of the top 20 deep-dish pizzas in the world.
A family of fifth generation farmers from Ituna, Sask. are trying to find answers after discovering several strange objects lying on their land.
A Listowel, Ont. man, drafted by the Hamilton Tigercats last week, is also getting looks from the NFL, despite only playing 27 games of football in his life.
The threat of zebra mussels has prompted the federal government to temporarily ban watercraft from a Manitoba lake popular with tourists.