Researching Ecclesial Abuse in Contexts of Silence: Methodological and Conceptual Challenges from Peru

Abstract

This article examines the methodological and conceptual challenges involved in researching abuse in Catholic ecclesial contexts, with Peru as a case study. While abuse studies have expanded significantly since the early 2000s, much of the available literature and many of the research models have emerged from the Global North. The Peruvian case shows the limits of transferring these approaches uncritically to contexts marked by silence, fragmented victim networks, strong religious legitimacy, social stratification, and limited public disclosure. Drawing on qualitative research, interviews, and recent Latin American scholarship, the article argues that abuse in ecclesial settings requires categories capable of holding together sin, crime, vulnerability, authority, and lived religion. It first discusses the methodological limits of quantitative approaches in contexts where victims rarely come forward publicly. It then examines the insufficiency of the sin-paradigm for understanding abuse as violence, crime, and institutional responsibility. Finally, it analyzes the notions of vulnerable adult, vulnerance, and spiritual abuse, proposing a typology of spiritual manipulation that includes impersonation of divine authority, manipulation of supernatural phenomena, sacred eroticism, and manipulation of the miraculous. The article concludes that Catholic abuse studies require greater attention to local religious worlds, social hierarchies, and the concrete ways in which authority, obedience, suffering, and the sacred are understood in everyday life.