Casa Alianza Director Bruce Harris "Fired" Over Sex Scandal!
Bruce Harris, the regional director of Casa Alianza, a Covenant House program that is Central America's most important children's rights organization, has been fired because of a relationship with a boy the organization had once helped.

Bruce Harris, the man who had been honored for his work on behalf of children's rights in Central America has been fired for paying for sexual favors.

Harris, "recently paid for sexual favors from a 19-year-old Honduran youth" who had been a resident of the organization's shelter until near the end of 2002, according to a statement released Friday by Covenant House, Casa Alianza's parent organization.

The encounter took place in a hotel room in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, the statement said. "Mr. Harris had admitted that he acted incorrectly," it continued.

The outspoken Harris had announced Thursday from his home in Costa Rica that he was retiring as executive director of Casa Alianza, the Latin American affiliate of the New York-based Covenant House, to spend more time with his family.

But on Friday Covenant House issued a statement saying it ''fired Mr. Harris and that Mr. Harris had admitted that he acted incorrectly.''

Casa Alianza officials in Honduras and Costa Rica declined to comment and their website, http://www.casa-alianza.org/  is not accessible.

Honduran prosecutors were investigating and Casa Alianza, based in Costa Rica, was cooperating, according to Covenant House.

The dismissal was a blow to the reputations of Harris and Casa Alianza as the chief defenders of the rights of children in Central America, which has crusaded for the rights of poor, abused and abandoned youth and which had demanded that police crack down on sexual tourism by foreigners who had preyed upon youths in the area.


Child prostitution is a significant regional problem
Harris gained international fame with his allegations that police officers and other security forces were executing street children, many of them petty criminals addicted to sniffing glue and industrial solvents.

Casa Alianza maintains shelters and other programs in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Mexico.

In a letter to The Associated Press announcing that he was resigning, Harris said Casa Alianza "had accomplished a lot for the protection of Latin American children during the last decade and a half.''

''We have not succeeded in stopping the suffering of street children . . . but at least the world now knows it's happening,'' he wrote.

But his busy travel schedule kept him away from his family, he added. "Our children are growing and I don't want to miss the time they have left at home.''


Harris had made many enemies
In 2000, then Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodríguez accused him of masterminding a campaign to vilify Costa Rica by generating media reports on the country's child-sex industry.

And in January, a Guatemala court acquitted him on charges that he defamed the wife of a Supreme Court justice when he alleged influence-trafficking in adoption cases.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press late Friday, he declined to give details about the case, but said he was "at the disposition" of investigators.

"Sheltering behind a lie has never been my way, so I assume, as I always have done, responsibility for my acts, correct or incorrect," Harris wrote. "I do not want to have the boys and girls served by Casa Alianza pay for my private life."

In its statement, Covenant House said Pedro Fragoso, Casa Alianza's director of internal auditing, had been tapped to replace Harris temporarily.

Covenant House spokesman Richard Hirsch said the agency's board met late Thursday and decided to set up a committee to carry out an independent investigation of the charges against Harris.

"We're a child care agency, our primary concern has to be the good of the children," he said. "When there's any question about that, we really have to step back and look at" the situation.

"The program is not one individual, it's all these people who work to assist young people," Hirsch added.

Casa Alianza worked with governments throughout the region to rescue homeless youngsters who had been forced into prostitution rings or the illicit drug trade. It even helped authorities in some countries organize sting operations designed to catch police officers and other adults abusing street children.

The British-born Harris was well-known throughout Latin America as an outspoken defender of children's rights.


Covenant House Privately Funded
Covenant House says it is the largest privately funded child-care agency in the United States providing shelter and service to homeless and runaway youth.

In 1989, a former male prostitute said he had an affair with Covenant House's founder, the late Rev. Bruce Ritter. Several other young men at Covenant House also accused the Franciscan priest of seducing them.

Ritter denied the charges, but was ordered to take a leave of absence when questionable financial transactions surfaced. He later resigned.

The Covenant House board eventually found no serious financial impropriety, but extensive evidence of sexual misconduct. Ritter, who died in 1999, was never charged with any criminal wrongdoing.