BarcelonaThe CREA research group, questioned for years by an alleged case of sexual harassment and power of its founder, professor emeritus Ramón Flecha, has decided to put an end to its acronym. The group of researchers announced its dissolution yesterday through a statement made public on social networks the day after the University of Barcelona (UB) brought the alleged harassment of Flecha and other people linked to the network of researchers back to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Despite this announcement, the group does not admit any accusation in its text. In fact, they make it clear that they feel victimized by “persecution”. The researchers argue that the group is being disbanded because it has “been subject to systematic and ongoing harassment” and that those who have remained associated with it have suffered “persistent discrimination” in public competitions and academic appointments as “punishment” for their work.
They also add that the “current smear campaign” has “exponentially” intensified the “pressures, harassment and discrimination”, which has caused, they say, “serious” consequences for the “physical and emotional” health of CREA members. “This continued flogging has made the continuity of the network unsustainable,” the researchers conclude in their message. In the letter they also define themselves as a group of people “committed to social impact science” in which each member carries out their work “with full academic freedom and autonomy”.
These explanations come only a few hours after the UB has announced that it is taking the case to the Prosecutor’s Office. It is already the third time (the other two times it was shelved) but this time they are confident that it will prosper. Up to eleven different witnesses recount – in an extensive 200-page report commissioned by the same university – conduct that indicates that those denounced by the CREA would have acted as a “coercive group with high control”. They also describe sexual relations “in a context of clear hierarchical inequality” with “students, interns, doctoral students or subordinates”. In the last few months, five more complaints have also been added, bringing the total number of cases to sixteen.
The report describes facts that “could be constitutive of criminal conduct of sexual and psychological coercion, abuse, personal and professional exploitation, as well as vexatious and intimidating conduct,” says the UB. In this sense, although he has not spoken of a sect, he does point to the possible existence of a “coercive group of high control”, characterized by a strong leadership, a hierarchical structure and a systematized operation that would have used the institutions for the benefit of the leader or the group itself.
Sources familiar with the case point out to the ARA that the argument prepared by the university “is very solid” and that in total – between the commission’s report, those of the psychologists and the criminal expert – the document delivered to the Prosecutor’s Office “occupies practically 1,000 pages”. In the documents, moreover, an attempt has been made to “narrow” the terminology very well so that it fits exactly with the definition and practices of the group, the same sources assure. Other cases that could constitute jurisprudence are also provided.
Salary and employment sections
Apart from the dissolution of the CREA group as such, on Monday the UB also announced that it was suspending the two PDI (research teaching staff) linked to the group from salary and work (for an extendable six months). He also withdrew the status of honorary professor to a third person.
On the contrary, it is not the first time that the group, which has not been part of the UB’s research groups since 2015, has changed its name or those in charge, but it has continued to work.
The antecedents of the case go back to complaints filed in 2004 and 2016, which were filed. On the one hand, in 2004 a complaint was made linked to conflicts in the internal functioning of the CREA group, in terms of financial management and scholarships, among others. “The UB activated internal mechanisms in force at the time and made a report that was sent to the prosecutor’s office and ended up being archived,” the university center pointed out. Subsequently, in 2016, another person reported internally an alleged case of psychological abuse and sectarian behavior. The UB took the complaint to the prosecutor’s office, which concluded that there were no facts constituting crimes or objective evidence of a criminal offence.
Judicial records
For his part, Ramon Flecha and who succeeded him as director of the CREA, the also professor of sociology at the UB Marta Soler -whose Generalitat has provisionally withdrawn a recognition of his career-, sued the newspaper ARA in 2020 for the article “They denounce a research group of the UB accusing it of acting like a sect”, published by this newspaper five years earlier. Following a press conference by CREA itself, the article explained that several members of the university community had denounced the research group and that these allegations were added to others from 2004, which had led the university to open an internal investigation and take it to the Prosecutor’s Office. It also gave the version of the CREA members who spoke at the press conference.
However, and despite the fact that the news of the filing of the complaints was also published, Flecha and Soler alleged that the ARA had constructed a “completely false narrative” and that the article was a “serious and intense violation of the right to honor.” In 2022 Flecha and Soler sued theNow the Balearic Islands and they claimed 30,000 euros for “moral damages”.
The acronym CREA comes from the name Community of Research on Excellence for All, but twenty years ago the same acronym, then an acronym, referred to the name Special Center for Research in Theories and Practices Overcoming Inequalities. Then it presented itself as a research center and now as a research community, but the UB says that CREA has not been attached to the university since 2015. This newspaper has tried to get in touch with the group’s representatives, but has been unsuccessful.
