Statute of Limitations on Child Sexual Abuse: Survivors Take Their Fight from France and Spain to Brussels

The French activist recounts that her life changed abruptly when memories from her early childhood resurfaced. She had not thought about them in thirty years, but they came back with what she calls "millimetric precision." She places one of them in 1978, when she was in CE2, the third year of primary school in France. She remembers exactly which classroom she was in when she made some drawings showing her abuser, with his mustache, and herself calling for help.

She says she made an appointment with a professional, "very wary." He explained that she would remain conscious during the session and had her lie down on an examination table. Two minutes in, she screamed her abuser's nickname, "Jeannot." She then saw a small white bicycle leaning against a wall and the first rape scene, in the alley next to her great-aunt's house.

According to the documentary, at the time nobody talked about traumatic amnesia as a defense mechanism. She describes it as a "black veil" that hid the memory and is suddenly lifted: "it hits you right in the face." Then comes the full post-traumatic stress syndrome: suicidal urges, dark thoughts, fears, rage. At first, she explains, you manage nothing; "it's the emotions that manage you." Only with an enormous amount of therapeutic work does the emotional level calm down, so you can begin thinking rationally about what to do next.

One of the central scenes is a conversation between the activist and her mother in the café where she told her what had happened. The mother clearly remembers her reaction: she believed her immediately and was convinced she was telling the truth. That revelation stirred up something that had happened to the mother herself as a child.

Her family had a chalet in the Pyrenees. Next door lived a family with two sons whom she describes as "real brutes," who at one point tried to assault her. She told her mother, who summoned the boys' mother. The scene ended with the two women making "common cause" to insist that the girl was talking nonsense. She says she felt "judged before a court." From then on, she did not want to talk about it again.

The daughter recalls that, on the day she told her story, her mother's first reaction was to say, "The same thing happened to me." Yet it is in this filmed conversation that the mother tells her the details for the first time. For the activist, this shows that when people begin to speak out, they discover that abuse has run through "generations and generations." She also points to the hardest part of her mother's account: her word was not heard, and she went practically from victim to accused.

What was decisive in her own healing, she insists, was that her mother believed her, and her father too, "even more so." She explains that with a return of traumatic memory, you struggle to believe yourself. Having your parents believe you without needing to be convinced is "huge" and "very precious, because it's rare."

Her personal conclusion is that "all trauma is transformed." She qualifies that she has not transformed everything, but she has transformed this story. Today there is, for her, a collective struggle, hope, solidarity and healing, including in her family relationships. She regards the other survivors she fights alongside as "sisters and brothers in the struggle." She believes that dynamic would not have existed had she not recovered the memories: it is not "a cure-all," she says, but the transformation is real.

Miguel Hurtado was born in Barcelona and grew up in the shadow of the powerful Spanish Catholic institution. According to the documentary, his path seemed to be leading him to the priesthood. At 21, he began to become aware of the harm he had suffered and that he would need therapy. He felt it was only fair that his family should not be the ones paying for it, so he asked the Abbey of Montserrat for compensation.

The abbey agreed to pay, but on one condition: it would not do so by bank transfer, but "under the table." Later, when he discovered that a memoir had been published, he went to see the abbot to return the money. He explained that the money "was burning" him. He understood that they were not trying to make amends for the harm, but to buy his silence, since when they paid him they had asked for discretion. In returning it, he told them he could no longer stay silent.

What "so to speak" saved him, he says, was that after he went public with his story, other victims came forward saying, "It happened to me too." It was no longer his word against the institution's, but "our word against the abuser's." Hurtado presents himself as a survivor of sexual abuse in the Church and as the first person to report the Montserrat case. He considers telling his story publicly one of the best decisions of his life, because the secret was suffocating him.

The documentary shows Hurtado with Leonor Paqué outside the headquarters of the People's Party (PP). Paqué introduces herself as a sculptor and journalist, a victim in the Santa Marina case in Bilbao, and the maker of the documentary Hermana Leonor, 20.000 km de confesión. Both urge the PP to reconsider its position on the bill to abolish the statute of limitations that was then going through Congress.

Their argument goes beyond individual cases. They maintain that the law would be "very healing" and "very restorative" even for those who cannot benefit from it. For the millions of survivors who, according to them, live in Spain, the message from the state and its institutions would be: "I believe you, I support you, I know it wasn't your fault, I know you need time to recover and tell your story." When the victim is ready, the state will be there to support them and the institutions to protect them.

The scale of abuse in the Spanish Catholic Church came to light thanks to the newspaper El País. Hurtado meets Julio Núñez, one of the journalists behind the investigation. He tells him a saying of his mother's: in Catalonia there were three untouchable "sacred cows," Barça, the Generalitat and Montserrat. With irony, he adds that Barça has ended up in court over corruption cases and Montserrat has turned out to be "a nest of pedophiles." He also describes the fear he felt as a legacy of the Franco regime: the Church as an untouchable power, and if it commits a crime, you have to keep quiet and let it handle the matter internally.

Núñez describes his work as "the tip of the iceberg." The conversation mentions 800 testimonies and a larger figure compiled by the newspaper, which the transcript leaves incomplete.

Leonor Paqué recounts how she came to that investigation. One morning, having coffee and churros at her neighborhood café, she read in El País that the paper was opening an email address to receive testimonies of abuse. At first she was shaken, it seemed unreal to her, and she let it go. Several days later, she decided to write about Santa Marina.

The journalist recalls that at first they did not know whether people would write in. Hundreds of cases began to arrive, including Leonor's, and "they kept coming." The flood contrasted with what the Church had told them after two weeks of questions: that there were no cases. For him, it was the beginning of understanding how "the web" between the Catholic Church and abuse worked.

The documentary follows Paqué as she rehearses a reading of a text she wrote about her experience. The person directing her says they don't mind if she cries: if she does, she should give herself space, breathe and carry on. They ask her not to be self-conscious and to dwell on the beauty of what she has written, where "every word is gold."

The text uses childlike imagery to describe the abuse by "Father Martín." It speaks of the lovely stories, of the caresses on the leg that start at the thick sock, go up to the knee and climb under the skirt, and of the soft hands that "make you feel warm." Then come the pain the girl didn't know the source of, the heat, the feeling of not being able to breathe, the wish to shut down and the silence that followed.

Between readings, Paqué talks about the weight of "not showing weakness": her loved ones suffer if they see her suffer, so she tries to make jokes. She admits that without her siblings, her children and a few dear people, she doesn't know where she would be today. She also expresses the anger of feeling trapped in that scene again despite all the life she has lived: "I'm a fighter. You become that 8-year-old girl again. You're there again." And she adds: "But I really like that girl."

According to the documentary, in 2011 the French activist's case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired, and she experienced it as a second trauma. A lawyer explains that the hardest part of her job is telling a victim that their case is time-barred when they don't know it. That person has gone through a whole psychological journey to be ready and arrives saying, "That's it, I can file a complaint." Then they discover there are time limits, and "it hits them right in the face."

The activist distinguishes between two possible failures. Filing a complaint is a voluntary decision, and accepting that an investigation may end without sufficient evidence is part of that risk. Running into "the wall of denial of justice" because of dates she considers arbitrary seems far more violent to her: it is as if an external force were telling her, "Forget it, move along, nothing to see here."

The documentary also argues that the statute of limitations is not a founding principle of law, but "simply a procedural rule." It could therefore be changed and is not a fixed pillar of criminal law. There is talk of a "taboo" around abolishing the statute of limitations in the legal world and of a current "vast hypocrisy." The person making this claim believes it will eventually happen, because ultimately nothing today prevents its adoption.

The survivors took their fight to the European level as members of Brave Movement, an international network of survivors. They are calling on European policymakers to treat sexual violence against children with the seriousness it demands. According to the documentary, their efforts paid off in June 2025: the European Parliament voted on the revision of a directive that, for the first time, abolishes the statute of limitations for sexual offenses against children. The film presents it as a bittersweet victory, because the representatives of national governments still had to be persuaded.

Hurtado has been traveling to Brussels for more than two years. Before an important meeting, he notes that it is "just one more meeting" after two or three years of campaigning at the European level. He insists on not getting frustrated because progress is slow. The French activist celebrates being in the European Parliament with him, a survivor from France and a survivor from Spain together. She believes there is momentum and that, when things move in the EU, they can start moving elsewhere.

Hurtado says he is optimistic. Three years ago, when they started, many countries had barely thought about the statute of limitations; now all 27 member states have had to examine the issue. He gives the example of Finland, which he considers a very progressive country but which, according to him, has one of the worst laws in Europe on this matter. The Finns themselves explained to them that, as the issue was being debated at the European level, they reviewed their law and saw that they had not touched it in twenty years. For Hurtado, change comes incrementally, country by country. The documentary stresses that the differences between states are enormous and that the time limit that applies to a victim depends on where they live.

Dutch MEP Jeroen Lenaers is the rapporteur for the text in the European Parliament and leads the negotiations with the representatives of the 27 countries. The activists thank him for citing Brave's work during the vote. He replies that the issue reached the agenda largely thanks to them, from the first committee hearing to where things stand now.

According to the documentary, Brave combines victims' testimonies and scientific data to push for changes in public policy. One such data point is that the average age at which people disclose childhood sexual abuse is 53. That is why, they insist, their demand is not political, but grounded in science and research.

Lenaers explains the weight of testimony. It is one thing for national ministers or officials to hear him explain why the statute of limitations needs to be extended. It is "ten, twenty times more powerful" for them to hear it from people who lived through it and can describe how it felt, what it did to them and why it is so important to have that opportunity later in life. According to him, it is more convincing than anything a politician can offer.

The MEP says he is "fairly optimistic" because he senses a change in mood. At the start of the negotiations, he says, Parliament put the situation of victims as its main concern, while member states thought almost exclusively about their own criminal justice systems and the complications the change would create. Now he also sees more attention among the states to what it means for victims. He is confident of reaching legislation that is "much better" than the current one and argues that the EU can and should legislate with minimum harmonization.

The outcome the documentary reports is partial. Abolishing the statute of limitations still seems out of reach, but an agreement has been reached to extend the limitation period across Europe to 32 years from the age of majority. For these survivors, it is already a first victory.

In the final part, Hurtado talks about what he values most in the people around him: being able to laugh and take things with humor. Each act of activism involves a very high level of adrenaline and ends up leaving him very tired and stressed. He needs to have fun and relax in a calm environment to recharge and get "back to work." He acknowledges that each victim finds their own solution: he has spoken with survivors who found healing in painting, sculpture or dance. Activism, he admits, "isn't for everyone."

Someone close to him highlights his determination and his "very altruistic" side. They recall that the first thing Hurtado said when he told them his story was that it would not happen again and that this would be his legacy. That person stresses that not everyone, in those circumstances, is willing to sacrifice so much time, confront their trauma again and invest so much in changes that will no longer reach him.

The documentary closes on that idea. From children to adults and from victims to fighters, Miguel and Leonor are fighting for the children they once were and for the children of tomorrow. The abolition of the statute of limitations they are calling for remains pending at the European level.