10 Years for a World without Abuse

• Chapter 1A different kind of trustLucid trust, why fight abuse, and the 2010–2020 timeline.
• Chapter 2The story that started it allThe Karadima case told by four voices, and the origin of the Foundation.
• Chapter 3To trust is to accompanyMutual Support Groups (GAMU), legal support, psychological guidance and Línea Libre (the Foundation’s helpline for children and young people).
• Chapter 4Training in trustAlliances with school communities, diploma programmes and courses for institutions.
• Chapter 5To trust is to transform societyRemoving the statute of limitations, policy advocacy and the Observatorio para la Confianza (the Foundation’s Observatory for Trust).
• Chapters 6 to 8A hallmark, a method and another ten yearsFirst contact and support, each area’s working method, and the dreams for the decade ahead.

• 2010In December the Foundation is constituted and begins to guide its first victims
• 50+first calls or contacts in one week, according to the support team
• 2019the removal of the statute of limitations for sexual abuse against children and adolescents is approved unanimously
• 10,000+Línea Libre consultations during 2020

Acknowledgements

These ten years of the Fundación para la Confianza have been possible only thanks to the committed work of many people.

Among them, we would like to highlight:

Alberto Etchegaray, Andrea Armendáriz, Andrea Carvajal Palma, Andrea Ossa, Andrés Alcalde, Andrés Lihn, Andrés Mendiburo, Carol Galleguillos, Carolina Schmidt, Clarisa Mingo, Claudia Contreras, Claudia Fischer, Cristian Neves, Denisse Araya, Elisa García-Huidobro, Fabián Nichel, Fernando Brierley, Fernando Paulsen, Francis Valverde, Francisca Cummins, Francisca Garrido, Francisca Reyes, Gabriel Guzmán, Isabel García-Huidobro, Isabel Margarita Gabrielli, Iván Zamora, Juan Pablo Fernández, Leontina González, Macarena Mayol, Marcela Paz (Isonauta) Peña, María Paz Dominguez, María Soledad Latorre, Matías Provoste, Maureen Locke, Natalia Roa, Nicolás de Cannière, Olivia Lihn, Patricio Walker, Paulina de Río, Pedro Pablo Achondo, Sandra Radic, Sebastián Balmaceda, Sergio Canales, Susana Canella, Trinidad Sánchez, Valerie Elgueta, Verónica Irarrázabal, Víctor Pellegrini, Ximena Aguiar and Ximena Carrasco.

To Juan José Soto and the Let’s Talk team. To the team at the Leche agency, especially Ángela Stuardo and Sibella Soto; to the team of lawyers at the Hermosilla law firm, especially Josefina Gutiérrez, Grace Schmidt, Pedro Sepúlveda, Carlos Toloza, Manuela Tironi, Karen Soto, Melina Consello and Pablo Carvacho; Gabriel Jefferies of the Mayo agency; Cristóbal Braun, of CBRA Films; and to Nexweb, especially Cristián Echeverría and Kelly Cárdenas.

Also to Amparo Moreno, Vittorio Marisio, Patricia Alonso and Manuel Valech for their support.

To our foundation’s current executive team: José Andrés Murillo, Valentina Correa, Verónica Uzcátegui, Catalina Venegas, Nicole Del Río, Paula Vergara, Diego Riveros, Sofía Aliaga, Elvira Vergara, Arturo Greene, Lidys Banda, Laura Baeza, Carolina Castro, Camila Hidalgo, Antonia Samaniego, Silvia Navaéz, Alejandra Acosta, Catalina Piraino, Bernardita Peralta, Francisco Aylwin, Josefa Bertolotto, Caribay Zambrano, María José Kaufmann and José Miguel Silva.

In memory of Rafael Urrutia Bunster, Sebastián Correa Murillo, Catalina Vela Montero, Etienne Tassin, Humberto Giannini and Alejandro Correa Correa.

And above all, we want to thank all the people who, with courage, generously gave their testimony to this project. Thank you, because this story was built with your willingness and your warmth.

Foreword

The hope that it is still possible to live

By: Marcela Aranda Escobar

My experience with the Fundación para la Confianza is interwoven with my own terrifying and harrowing experiences of sexual abuse, grounded in power and in abuse of conscience, at the hands of the Jesuit priest Renato Poblete Barth. Everything from my first knowledge of the Foundation to experiencing in person the loving welcome and receiving the generous and unconditional support of its members has been the most precious treasure, one that marked my passage from horror and anguish to hope, from a fickle survival to life.

From the creation of the Fundación para la Confianza in 2010 until 2018, my knowledge of it was very vague and imprecise. When James Hamilton was invited by a colleague to the Faculty of Theology of the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile to give a lecture on the after-effects of abuse from a medical point of view, it was the first time I had more concrete and direct news of its existence. Nevertheless, my first approach to its vision and mission came when Juan Pablo Hermosilla, the Foundation’s lawyer, gave a lecture in October 2018 on abuse in ecclesiastical settings at the Faculty of Theology, before some twenty academics.

In the preceding days, I had begun to remember the horrific sexual abuse, abuse of conscience and abuse of power I had been subjected to for a long time during my youth. For some reason, perhaps because I wanted to free myself from the pain and anguish that weighed on me, that day I unexpectedly gave my testimony in front of everyone present: that I had been abused by a priest and forced to have an abortion. And then I asked the lawyer how one could regain trust after suffering such a dreadful experience. I remember that he looked straight at me and, in a measured voice, told me the story of a little girl whose parents had brought her to the Foundation, and of how she gradually regained the joy of living. I sensed, though still vaguely, that there was a path unknown to me through which I could heal and rebuild my life.

Several weeks passed after that lecture. I sank into the hell of horror and madness as new and even more dreadful memories emerged through the cracks of my consciousness, opening a lacerating, bleeding wound. At that time, I wanted to express that terrible experience in tattoos, as a way of leaving on my skin a visual testimony of what I was going through: a phoenix was the first, to symbolise resurrection from the ashes of my life, pulverised by the years of abuse and its effects. I had five more tattoos done by the end of November, which symbolised the fight I was beginning to put up to survive. It was then that a colleague and friend helped me arrange a meeting with Juan Pablo Hermosilla, and accompanied me at that moment to begin a healing process in which the Foundation has helped me unconditionally.

In his office, flooded with the warm sunlight of November 2018, I told him my painful story, full of horror, anguish and fear. And so began a healing process that involved two fundamental pillars: legal support and psychological care. From that moment on, although Juan Pablo Hermosilla became for me the visible and welcoming face of the Fundación para la Confianza, behind that work there was a great team of people who have been an indispensable support for me.

The free legal assistance provided by the Foundation is fundamental in the healing process of a victim of abuse, and it is inseparably intertwined with emotional support at moments of extreme fragility. Indeed, when you feel that your lawyer is someone who welcomes you, listens to you and believes you, that is the first step towards trusting again, even though it is such a difficult step to take because of the dreadful fear of not being believed. And as a result, after years of apprehension that made it impossible for you to form healthy bonds with other people, you feel that you are beginning to tear down the walls that cut you off from the world.

Then, at a second stage, comes your lawyer’s support for you to file the report, and he goes with you to the place where you have to file it. That is a terrifying moment, and it is vital to feel backed by someone who not only looks after the legal aspects but is at your side, holding you up while you recount your horrific experience of abuse, which is very hard, because your words come with the dreadful experience of feeling again how they abused you. Having someone hold you up at that moment is of absolute importance and marks the line between survival and total annihilation.

It is a vital support —something like air to breathe— that opens the way to the hope of a life with dignity.

The network of psychological care that the Fundación para la Confianza provides is another of its valuable contributions to victims of abuse. They were the ones who recommended the psychiatrist who has treated me from December 2018 to the present. Therapy and medication help you balance your emotions, above all the dreadful anguish and the suicidal ideation that, like dark forces, completely paralyse your survival instinct. In addition, the consulting room becomes the safe and protected space in which you can express your most painful experiences, discover the after-effects that the trauma left in you, and be given the tools to heal them. It is a tremendously harrowing process, but absolutely necessary to survive and put your life back together. By analogy, it is the passage from the chrysalis in which your life was encapsulated to the butterfly that emerges beautiful, resplendent and ready to take flight towards freedom and hope.

All that remains is for me to give my most sincere thanks to the Fundación para la Confianza for welcoming and supporting me, and in this way saving my life from the dark abyss of abuse, giving me the hope that it is still possible to live.

This, the path that has been travelled to reach this point where it is possible to recover freedom and the will to live, and the hundreds of stories that the Fundación para la Confianza has been able to learn of —and accompany— is what this book is about.