As many as 400,000 people are estimated to have suffered sexual abuse from Spain’s Catholic clergy and lay people, according to an independent commission.

At least half of the victims may have been children, said the nearly 800-page report released to the speaker of the Spanish parliament’s lower house Friday and then to reporters.

Conducted by Spain’s ombudsman, Angel Gabilondo, who said the Church had often minimized or denied people’s reports of abuse, Spain’s first official probe of sex abuse by clergy members or others connected to the Catholic Church in the country was drawn from a survey based on 8,000 valid phone and online responses.

According to The Associated Press, the poll said 1.13% of the Spanish adults questioned said they were abused as children by either priests or lay members of the church, including teachers at religious schools. Of those, 0.6% identified their abusers as clergy members.

By those estimates, more than 1 in 200 Spaniards may have been sexually abused by Catholic Church priests, the survey suggested.

“What has happened has been possible because of that silence,” the ombudsman said.

Gabilondo has suggested the creation of a state fund to compensate victims.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said the probe’s findings represent a “milestone” for Spain’s democracy.

“Today we are a little better as a country,” Sánchez said Friday from Brussels, “because a reality has been made known that everyone has known for many years, but which no one spoke of.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press.
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