Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Other Christian institutions & contexts Catholic Putaendo, Santiago, Talca, Concepción, Valdivia and Punta Arenas, Chile · 2026

Chile: civil court finds the Salesian order followed a 'systematic and institutional pattern' enabling sexual abuse of students across six cities, orders damages to nine survivors

Record class

Institutional event

Evidence status

Civil finding

Authority role

Salesian Congregation (Salesianos), Roman Catholic religious order operating schools across Chile; individual priests named in the underlying abuse allegations include Rimsky Rojas, with Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati and Alfonso Horn implicated in the original criminal complaints

Organization

Salesian Congregation (Congregación Salesiana), Chile

Spiritual nexus

This is an institutional civil-liability finding rather than a single perpetrator's criminal conviction: the court found the religious order's own structure and practice of protecting its institutional image over reporting abuse is what let priests' clerical and educational authority over students translate into a repeated, cross-city pattern of harm.

  • Pastoral or clerical authority
  • Institutional obedience or isolation

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2026-07-14 · civil judgment against the institution

    Séptimo Juzgado Civil de Santiago (Seventh Civil Court of Santiago), Chile. On 14 July 2026 Judge Diego Portilla Silva of the Seventh Civil Court of Santiago found the Salesian Congregation civilly liable for a 'systematic and institutional pattern' of structural deficiencies that enabled repeated sexual abuse of students at Salesian schools in Putaendo, Santiago, Talca, Concepción, Valdivia and Punta Arenas. The ruling covered nine former students and ordered a total of 325 million pesos in damages: five victims awarded 50 million pesos each, two awarded 30 million pesos each, one awarded 15 million pesos, and one awarded no damages. The court explicitly rejected the Congregation's internal canonical investigations as an adequate legal response to crimes affecting fundamental rights, and found the order used mechanisms like priestly dispensations to remove accused priests quietly rather than report them.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • clerical and educational authority over students at Salesian-run schools in six Chilean cities
  • institutional practice, per the court's finding, of using internal mechanisms such as priestly dispensations to quietly remove accused abusers rather than report them to civil authorities, prioritizing institutional image over child protection

Primary record

Sources

national newspaper court reporting investigation report El Mostrador, 'Condenan a la orden Salesiana por «patrón sistemático e institucional» de abusos sexuales' (in Spanish).

Full investigative account of the 14 July 2026 civil judgment: judge, court, the nine victims and their individual damages awards, the cities involved, and the court's institutional-pattern finding.

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