Miguel Hurdato chooses to make a documentary film to expose his childhood sexual abuse by the monk of the Catholic Church. The documentary based on many victims of sexual abuse. If the story is told not by one person but by many victims and all sides of the events are included in the narrative, it becomes the story of all of us, like Miguel Hurdato’s story.
Its very strange feeling for me to introduce another victim who has the same experience like me. Listening to someone else’s story is sometimes a way to find your own meaning. How was Miguel Hurdato succeed to embark on a journey from being a victim to becoming an activist despite great pressure? Choosing to be an activist isn’t just because someone has had traumatic childhood or someone has been subjected to injustice by other people, this is also a way of telling the world to stop hypocrisy. Maybe that’s why the title of the movie is ‘Examination of Conscience’.
We see all the parties of the incident in the movies. Adults who were sexually abused as a child, church officials at different levels of authority, the father of a victimized child and the perpetrators… Blood-curdling statements…
As our stories overlap in most places, it is very hard for me to write the victims’ expressions. Although the perpetrator is not their father, as in my story, but there are officials of the Catholic Church, who have a father figüre and perhaps even more power over children than the father, the results of the suffering and trauma are very similar.
Shedding tears of adult men in their 40’s in front of cameras, their rage against the unmet justice, feeling alone due being unheard even from their families, their struggle to standstill, and being unable to do so…It is hard to define. Watch it.
The Catholic Church…the best interpretation of Catholic Church intervention to events, comes from a father of a victim. ‘Yes. Catholic Church does something when these become evident. It does something to cover’. Otherwise how could this silence last for such a long time? . On October 2021,Vatikan unveiled the number of abused children in France by Catholic Church institutions. Since 1950, around 216.000 children were abused. The Catholic Church by consent, threat or fear, covered up them all. How the situation of unjudged clergy can be explained otherwise?
The perpetrator who admits some of his abuse makes a very strange statement: “ I knew they were protecting me. I was expecting to be handcuffed but it didn’t happen.” Like the perpetrator says in the Francoise Ozon movie, based on a real sexual abuse lawsuit and taking it a step further, “ I informed the seniors(authorities), asked them to stop me but they did not.” 216.000 children and yet no one has been put on trial until lately. Even if they face trial, since the catholic church is bigger than law, almost none of them have been charged. The reason behind Pope’s “zero tolerance” statement in the recent years regarding sexual assaults is not because the church is confronted what’s been done, but that covering up these incidents is not possible anymore.
Miguel Hurdato chose England to speak up because in Spain, where he were born and raised, it is not possible to make such revelation. Sexual abuse takes place in one of the most respected churches of Spain. In Spain, Catholic Church is still not accepting the number of incidents, not even dismiss the perpetrators. At best case what happens is relocating their position. Catholic Church’s outlook on sexual assaults is best described by the words of a senior official (authority) “Church is not surprised by these sinners because church exists for the sinners.”
Officials from the Catholic Church, one of the most important institutions in which the Great Chief Franco strengthened his power, inflicted terrible pain on children in the 80s. But these children are now fighting, not giving up, despite the unbearable pain they experience as adult men. Liftting their crushed dignity, to unite their shattered souls, to embrace their abandoned childhoods. I bow respectfully before these brave people…
Miguel Hurdato
Maris Fuste
Jota
Carlos Suarez
Felix Alarcon
Eduardo Ortas
M.L.
İnigo De Amescua
Juan Cuatrecasa
Emiliano Alvarez
Tomas Garcia
Ruben Lopez
and Javier …
Translation:Özlem