Abuse survivors in Bolivia claimed the Society of Jesus in Catalonia used the country as a “dumping ground” for paedophile priests.
The Bolivian Survivors’ Community (CBS) requested that the Catalan ombudsman and parliament investigate alleged cases of abuse involving approximately 1,000 victims and about 20 Jesuits.
Some had criminal records or complaints regarding their suspected abuse at schools in Spain before they were sent to the “missions” in Bolivia.
Alejandro Klock, legal representative in Spain for the CBS, told the EFE news agency that the Tarraconense (Catalan) Province was the “mother province” for the Jesuits’ Bolivian mission.
“They created a criminal system which was perpetuated for 69 years and still has not been overcome today,” he said.
Most of the Jesuits accused of abuse are now dead, including Alfonso Pedrajas, who left a diary – published in the Spanish daily El Pais in 2023 – detailing his abuse of children while he was headteacher of a school in the Cochabamba region of central Bolivia.
A second Jesuit, Lucho Roma abused 70 indigenous girls between 1994 and 2005.
A report from the CBS stated that the Tarraconense Province “had not only administrative, hierarchical and financial control over every level of the mission in Bolivia, it completely dominated it at every level”.
It said the Catalan Jesuits had the authority to “transfer priests with criminal records for sexual abuse” to Bolivia, which became “a dumping ground for paedophiles”.
“The Bolivian mission was used to hide aggressors and distance them from justice in Spain, exposing a vulnerable civil population to new abuses,” it said.
The CBS asked the Catalan spokesman and parliament for an “institutional response” to “the biggest case of paedophilia in Latin America”.
Last year Bolivian courts sentenced two Spanish former Jesuit provincials in Bolivia to a year in prison for covering up the abuse.