Chapter 2 · 10 Years for a World without Abuse
The story that started it all
Chapter 2. Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton, José Andrés Murillo and their lawyer, Juan Pablo Hermosilla, recall the disclosure of the Karadima case, the cover-up they faced and why they decided to create a foundation.
The following text is built from the ideas and words of José Andrés Murillo, Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and Juan Pablo Hermosilla, each identified by a specific colour. Each paragraph, or group of paragraphs, is marked with the colour of the person speaking.
- José Andrés Murillo
- Juan Carlos Cruz
- James Hamilton
- Juan Pablo Hermosilla
Juan Carlos Cruz, James Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo entered the national public scene in 2010, after disclosing, through a report on the programme Informe Especial on Televisión Nacional, the abuse they had suffered at the hands of Fernando Karadima, a renowned and powerful former priest of the elite of Santiago and of the country. Until then the priest had a reputation as a saint. Today, more than ten years later, together with Juan Pablo Hermosilla, the lawyer in the case, they reflect —in a choral account— on what the disclosure of this case has meant for them and for society, and explain how the outcome of this experience has been, among many other things, the impulse that gave rise and meaning to a Foundation that accompanies and defends people who went through, or are going through, a similar situation.
José Andrés Murillo
When it all began, we were on the front pages of the newspapers practically every day, and it was something that went on for a long time, a long time; it was exhausting.
Juan Carlos Cruz
I was ashamed of appearing in so many places. I mean, I was insulted a lot on Twitter and elsewhere, and it hurt. It still hurts, but on the other hand I kept my faith and the hope that something bigger could be done.
James Hamilton
When it all happened, I thought they were going to kill me. When things like that happen, on that scale, you are in such a sorry state defending yourself, trying to hold on, to survive, trying to keep going, that the only thing you think about is how to breathe one more day, and what you fear most is that they will kill you or do even more harm to your family.
José Andrés Murillo
I was very afraid of exposure, and it repelled me a bit. I didn’t want them poking into my life. But before the report came out, I saw how they started to question James and Juan Carlos, so harshly, that I felt I had to do something, and support them. It wasn’t convenience or anything like that, it was like when you see a friend being beaten up and you just jump in.
Juan Carlos Cruz
To this day I’m surprised at how public my life and the others’ lives are, but I’m also surprised at the scale it has reached worldwide; I mean, to end up creating a crisis in Pope Francis’s papacy, that was incredible. I never thought some of the things that happened would happen; I mean, the New York Times ran an editorial saying that Juan Carlos Cruz was destroying Pope Francis’s papacy if he didn’t do something.
James Hamilton
Almost all victims of abuse feel that they alone have been abused, that there are no other victims, and they are very affected because the person who harms them tends to isolate them and make them feel guilty, so the first thing that happens to them is that they are alone. To think, then, that there were many more, or even to think that there were many more victims of Karadima, was an assumption, but one that gained ground as José, Juan Carlos and I got in touch with each other.
Later, the fact that new victims appeared in the report was partly what allowed us to keep going and make this report. We felt that what had happened to the three of us was a small sign that this would have happened to more people.
Juan Pablo, at a point when the case was already well advanced, told us: “look, this is going to set off a lot of people giving new meaning to, discovering or reliving their abuse, and they are going to be left unprotected”, because at that time in Chile there was nothing like the Foundation, where they could be accompanied.
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
The perception that this was much more widespread came to us once the Karadima issue had settled in public opinion as a scandal, not only within the Church but as a scandal about abuse in general. That was when we started to receive calls and —in my case— I started to receive many testimonies, under professional confidentiality, from people recounting other situations of abuse. At some point, even journalists who were covering the Karadima case would come up to me to tell me about cases of abuse they had lived through or known about, and that happened to me with some judges too.
That is how the issue began to spread to the private sphere, to schools, to universities, workplaces, to the family sphere; I mean, to all the situations where there was an asymmetrical power relationship of an adult man or woman over a child.
I began this whole process very innocently, because I have always remained a Catholic, and I go to Mass, so at the beginning I wanted to go to Cardinal Errázuriz, and I thought he was going to help us.
Juan Carlos Cruz
For that same reason, when it all started we did the whole procedure through the Church, trusting. Months later I woke up and realised that they were giving us the runaround, they were stabbing us in the back, and I found out everything James and José Andrés had gone through, and it was horrible.
A Church —and a society— that covered up
José Andrés Murillo
I always imagined that the Church, the parishes and the priests were a group that supported the weakest people, and that it was unconditional, immaculate. That is why I thought I was going to meet people who were on that wavelength, people who would go all out for us, 100%, without questioning us, as part of their very essence.
But I realised they weren’t.
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
I thought that when these cases became known, the cardinals, Ezzati and Errázuriz at that time, were going to react like normal people, with empathy, that they would be horrified. I imagined it was just a lack of knowledge, and I have to admit that I was surprised and appalled by the fact that they knew all these things and had covered them up intentionally.
In the end, the same thing happened with the State. One hoped that the judges would take these cases and investigate, but seeing the State’s first reaction was terrifying, because they closed all the cases; they didn’t even want to investigate.
The first battles we had to fight there were against the State, to manage to put judicial and social pressure on it to investigate this. I mean, there was a situation of abandonment there whose only effect was the re-traumatisation of the victims, or personal revenge.
James Hamilton
The level of cover-up and re-traumatisation that the Church carried out could only be done by a guilty institution, because if for them this had been an isolated case, the Church would have tackled it or tried to resolve it with great urgency, and that was not what happened. So when you see the Church becoming a cover-up institution, well, that was like the signal that made us realise we were facing a massive problem.
José Andrés Murillo
Not only did they downplay the abuse, they even justified their actions by thinking about a “hereafter”, and that is why I realised there was a dissociated reality, and that looking at that, one could think there was something more deeply instilled in society.
Many times in the Church faith is used to dissociate reality, and for me that is part of the problem. What’s more, I would tell you that abuse is a consequence of this. Abuse is a consequence of the dissociation of the senses that exists in many parts of society. People dissociate their feeling, their sense of life, their responsibility, through a paradigm and a dogma that is heterogeneous. That is where the essence of abuse lies, and in particular of the clerical cover-up.
Religions, and in particular the Catholic religion, can be a form of dissociation rather than of integration of life. It is like an add-on that gives you a pass to the next life, a permanent nihilism. For many people, because God exists everything is permitted, because they go to confession and are forgiven. Now, a more embodied and authentic religious experience could constitute a deep ethical responsibility for what a person is and does, but since that hardly ever happens, there is dissociation. That is the unacceptable dissociation that one sees and lives in the Church, and in many places, which allows people not to take responsibility for reality. Even so, I admire those who live faith and life without the former being an evasion or a justification, but a real and responsible integration.
Juan Carlos Cruz
My faith has always been tremendously important to me, even during the abuse, and after it, because since I couldn’t tell anyone, the only ones who mattered to me were God and Mary; I always tried to take refuge in them.
I felt they were like my friends, that even though some members who claimed to be their allies did me appalling harm, I never blamed them, well, sometimes, but for me faith has always been tremendously important. I’ve been a rebel, because I used to say: “no fucking way am I going to stop going to Mass because they say a gay man can’t take Communion. To hell with that, I’m always going to go to Communion because the Virgin and God love me, I don’t care”.
After the abuse became known, when I went to Mass, I noticed people nudging each other when I walked past and questioning whether I should take Communion for being “an enemy of the Church”, but you know what, I said: “this is so important to me that I’m not going to let them win and destroy the one thing that is enormously important to me, that consoles me and protects me”. Even so, I respect everyone who is no longer Catholic and I understand all the people who want nothing to do with the Church.
My faith is my consolation, it is what motivates me and it is a refuge that has pulled me out of tremendously dark moments, and I’m not ashamed to say so. I’m not going to let these idiots destroy everything I have, just because some people consider me “an enemy of the Church”.
Why do it
Juan Carlos Cruz
I couldn’t live in a society where Karadima controlled everything that, at that time, he controlled, and where things like that kept happening. I couldn’t rest easy with that. For this reason and for my safety, at a certain point I decided to leave the country, but then, from here, I kept up the fight.
José Andrés Murillo
I felt a lot of indignation, anger and many other things, but I also found that this indignation didn’t paralyse me; instead it drove me to understand the reasons and to understand why what happened had happened. That is also why I studied a great deal, and I always say that this whole process has been like a second doctorate in parallel, because it really helped me understand more about abuse and about the society in which abuse is committed.
James Hamilton
In my case, with my biological mind, I always tend to think in terms of epidemics and, from this perspective, I realised that this problem was structural and that if it had happened in other parts of the world it is because it is a massive epidemic. So, in that sense, it was clear to me at least that this was something of great magnitude.
That is why fighting this battle was a total decision. Fighting a fight like that, for ten years, with a personal goal, is crazy. Only a collective idea, one that came from empathy and from solidarity with all people who are victims of abuse of any kind, was what gave us the strength for this. In other words, petty goals don’t give you the strength you need to see this through.
Juan Carlos Cruz
Since I met the Pope, in 2018, I have kept in contact and stayed close. For me it has been very important. I feel that in this way I may have contributed to more progress in the fight against abuse, and so to helping many people heal. When people tell me, almost with pity: “oh man, everything you’ve suffered”, I think yes, it’s true I suffered quite a lot, but if you look at what people who have been victims of sexual abuse suffer, people who are alone, or who aren’t believed and have no support, there’s no comparison. So if, through what you do, you can lighten the load for other people, I would do it a thousand times.
In those conversations I have been able to help him with cases and things, and I feel tremendously honoured that, through that connection, I may have contributed to more progress on the issue, and that this can help many people heal. When people tell me, almost with pity: “oh man, everything you’ve suffered”, I think yes, it’s true I suffered quite a lot, but if you look at what people who have been victims of sexual abuse suffer, people who are alone, or who aren’t believed and have no support, there’s no comparison. So if, through what you do, you can lighten the load for other people, I would do it a thousand times.
José Andrés Murillo
We were part of a very deep social clash, of a cultural conflict, a conflict of conservatives, between conservatives —dogmatic, afraid of change, possessors of the truth, of everything— and a freedom-seeking way of thinking, which took on in its essential flesh the doors of self-liberation from abuse, from sexual abuse.
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
This catharsis that took place on account of the ecclesiastical abuse in the Karadima case made it possible to open a floodgate of sexual abuse in Chilean society that had been closed.
All the scandals that kept coming out, and the fact that the issue did not disappear from public opinion for ten years, has to do, in my view, with the role played by the media, which was different from what happened in other countries. In Chile the media played a very important role in bringing these facts to light and in supporting the people who were reporting.
In a way, this massive exposure gives you a responsibility to keep up the fight and keep going.
James Hamilton
I think one of the most important points has to do with the issue of the statute of limitations, which was something we weren’t very clear about, and which became clear to us essentially when, after one of our public interventions, it was decided to reopen the investigation. The case had almost been dismissed, and the first thing they told us was that it was the old justice system and that the case was time-barred because more than ten years had passed since the events.
For us it was always inconceivable. It was tremendously unjust and did not answer to the harm we had suffered and that is caused to victims of abuse, which is a kind of permanent and evolving harm. Discovering this kind of injustice in the legislation was one of the reasons that drove us to fight to have these offences declared exempt from the statute of limitations.
Was it worth it?
José Andrés Murillo
This case helped a lot to break down some structures. I feel we were part of a movement; we are not the movement, but that movement does carry us, and that is much bigger than our stories. The exposure of our cases undoubtedly allowed the issue to resonate.
Juan Carlos Cruz
One thing that made a big impression on me was the experience of being able to meet survivors in different parts of the world. For example, in Warsaw, we held a meeting in a place that looked like a bunker, and a hundred people came who were survivors, out of the thousands of victims of abuse there are in Poland. It felt incredible to speak to very brave people, who could have faced repercussions for being there, but who came anyway.
Sometimes I’ve talked with fathers and mothers of survivors who tell me they come on behalf of their sons and daughters who couldn’t bear it and took their own lives. They talk to me to understand more, because when they hear victims, they say “I understand what happened to him or her”, and I swear to you that breaks my heart. So doing it for them makes up for any anguish, any suffering.
James Hamilton
The Karadima case changed our whole society.
Juan Carlos Cruz
This case revealed that we are in a society that, yes, is brave, but that was hiding its problems, hiding the problem of a Church led and kept going by an elite, and of bishops who, it didn’t matter if they came from a working-class neighbourhood, once they were made bishops thought they were cousins of Eliodoro Matte. It’s incredible how the elitism that exists in Chile carries over into many spaces in society. I think we lived in an elitism fixed on surnames, on skin colour and on the school you went to.
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
A sick society began to appear, and data and statistics began to be analysed and systematised. As a result, it became visible that by far the largest share of abuse was committed by people close to the victim, who were in a caregiving position towards the children, and at the same time, by far the majority of perpetrators were men, and this had to do with a way of exercising male power.
This process also began to line up with the opening of areas of work related to gender-based abuse and to the mistreatment of women by men. So a social reality in Chile began to appear that cut across all social strata, firmly established in the elite, which was compounded by a reality of toxic masculinity and a way of exercising power aggressively and harmfully towards children and women.
There was something in the male model, and in the teaching of roles in society, in which the man’s economic level made no difference. One could see that he was predisposed to situations of abuse against children and women. In the Church this was taken to an extreme, through a system of double impunity in which, on the one hand, people were caught abusing and, instead of being punished, were protected by the Church, and on the other, a system of impunity that, through the statute of limitations and the patriarchal exercise of justice, mistreated the victims all over again.
A system of double impunity
- Those who were caught abusing, instead of being punished, were protected by the Church.
- The statute of limitations and the patriarchal exercise of justice mistreated the victims all over again.
James Hamilton
This chapter could not be closed without an impact of national scope and a change in legislation. Not doing it was completely inconsistent with our path and with what we had lived through. In the end, some people tolerate injustice less than others, and to tell the truth it was extremely important to me to be able to help change the system. Since I happened to have a great deal of exposure, I decided to fight the battle not only for myself but for people, for all victims of abuse, around the world, because Chile’s example began to spread around the world.
I gave a lot of my lifeblood to this, and I find that it was a tremendously satisfying thing to know that we were able to do something, helping to get the statute of limitations law through. This dedication consumes you in the end, and you always want more, and for more things to be achieved, but I think it was a tremendous step forward for everyone at the social level, and a great step forward for society.
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
The State was predisposed not to believe, to reject this idea of abuse and not to get into trouble. So that is where the idea came from of making use of the experience, everything that had been learned in the fight, what had been achieved, judicially and socially, and turning it into a foundation that would provide the same help and contribute the knowledge we had.
James Hamilton
We must not forget that priests are human beings, and there are common factors between a father who abused a son or daughter and a priest who abused a boy or girl; there are common situations, and we need to establish them. For this reason, the idea of a foundation began to become more visible, because we have always kept to our position of defending human rights, preventing abuse and prosecuting perpetrators.
The dream of a foundation
- 2010Public disclosure of Karadima’s abuse in a television report
- Cover-upThe Church covers up the facts and the State closes the cases
- FoundationWhat was learned in the judicial and social fight becomes help and knowledge for other victims
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
It was a tremendous challenge to start planning this project, because everything was constant learning, and in the midst of that we began to organise ourselves systematically, to take on cases, to build a system; we started creating protocols, learning from the mistakes we made, and fostering a safe environment for victims.
José Andrés Murillo
For me, creating a foundation was a liberation. I didn’t want people to keep talking about me, so that is why I sought to create a different kind of body, an organisation, something that would last over time. Not an association of victims or survivors, as is done in many places, and as have also been created here. What I was looking for was something that would transcend individuals, an organisation that generates cultural processes; that is why we gave it the name “para la confianza” (“for trust”). It was through this idea that I arrived at lucid trust; that is the main concept. We are not in favour of distrusting everyone, but of shedding critical light on cultural spaces, on dark spaces. Light is to abuse what it is to vampires. They hate light. Abuse really has a lot of the vampire about it.
I have made many mistakes, but even so, and above all from what I have learned, it has been a philosophical process, because we are talking about a new philosophy at the foundations of society.
Some people have criticised us, saying: “well, you’ve been this public because you’re posh, because you’re from the elite”, and I think that has indeed been the case, and I feel that makes us more responsible. In the end that has made it possible to make abuse visible everywhere.
Juan Carlos Cruz
I acknowledge the privilege of where I come from, which is a “traditional” family, and I have shared in the benefits that looking the way I look gives me, but my family always taught me that all people are equal, that there are no differences, and that we must care about those who live in poverty, and not by handing them the fish, but by teaching them to fish.
José Andrés Murillo
It is legitimate for people to criticise us for being from the elite and for our case therefore having had more media coverage. They are right. However, we have seen it from another place. For us, belonging to a privileged class makes us responsible for making abuse visible and for saying that abuse does not belong to us.
And while being from the elite has helped us make it visible, we do not want this issue to stay within the elite. It has an elitist origin, but an anti-elitist expansion. So, there are some who have told us that the need to do social “tourism” has been more important than seeking justice, and that is not true. It is unacceptable to say that, because it has been quite the opposite.
Juan Carlos Cruz
This whole process has had a lot to do with taking responsibility for that privilege, with meeting people from all kinds of places who have been victims and trying to welcome them, not by handing them everything already solved, but by giving them tools to help them cope.
Juan Pablo Hermosilla
The Foundation has undoubtedly helped our society to understand and become aware of more aspects of abuse, because unfortunately we are in a rather hypocritical country in several respects, one that still has not managed to internalise that abuse and mistreatment must be severely punished. I do think there has been great progress in terms of public opinion, but from the institutional point of view, both in the Church and in the State, an enormous amount is still lacking.
And obviously I think this awareness influenced the climate of rebellion we saw in October 2019, when it became evident that people —and society— were not willing to tolerate any more judges, or police, or a Church that covers up, that expressly or tacitly protects perpetrators and does not protect the people whose rights were violated.
James Hamilton
The Foundation has been an initiative that has helped change the face of this country; it has changed the face of how abuse is confronted, it gave independence to that confrontation, and in a way, it offers a perspective for the future for everyone who wants to work against abuse and against the prevention of adverse childhood events, because we are there, and we are a point of reference, so anyone who wants to make progress on these issues necessarily has to look to the Foundation.
José Andrés Murillo
This is not anger, it is not mere revenge, it is lucid trust, and understanding that, we have gradually moved into children’s rights and into understanding abuse of conscience. It was very important, I think, to get involved in legislative processes, in education, in organisations, and in whatever we can. We truly want to transform society, because abuse is still very present, and that is fought with critical thinking, with work generated from lucid trust.
About this edition. Web version of the book 10 Years for a World without Abuse (10 años por un mundo sin abuso), published in Spanish as a PDF by the Fundación para la Confianza in 2021 (first printed edition of 500 copies, Ograma Impresores; ISBN 978-956-402-822-4). Director: José Andrés Murillo. General coordination: Nicole Del Río. Research and writing: Benjamín Gálvez. Art direction and design: Cristhian Sotomayor. Illustrations: Jesu Villa and Cristhian Sotomayor. Editing: Natalie Sève. In this version, errata have been corrected and graphics summarising the content have been added; the illustrations of the people who give testimony are not reproduced. Figures, positions and legal references are as of the date of the book. Download the original PDF (in Spanish)
Translation by Fundación Para la Confianza. In case of any difference, the Spanish version prevails. Spanish version.