MEXICO:
Church Lashes Out at Sex
Abuse Victim
By
Diego Cevallos
MEXICO CITY, (IPS)
- Catholic Church
leaders in Mexico
accused a victim of
sexual abuse, who
brought charges in a
U.S. court against
Mexican Cardinal
Norberto Rivera for
protecting an alleged
pedophile priest, of
seeking economic gain.
An article published in
the Mexico City
Archdiocese’s weekly
publication Desde La Fe
on Tuesday says that "a
majority of the civil
lawsuits brought in the
United States are aimed
at obtaining large sums
of money, and 95 percent
of these suits are won
by the plaintiffs. It's
a sure thing."
The article, which at no
point laments the
victim’s suffering or
offers solidarity,
states that "the real
reason that Joaquín
Aguilar filed the
lawsuit was because of
the juicy opportunity
represented by bringing
a civil suit in the
United States."
"We are talking about
millions of dollars!
Money that he could
never hope to obtain in
Mexico," says the
article.
Aguilar, who says he was
sexually abused in the
1980s by a Roman
Catholic priest in
Mexico who is also
accused of molesting
some 50 other boys,
filed a lawsuit in Los
Angeles, California last
year accusing Rivera and
Los Angeles Cardinal
Roger Mahony of
conspiring to cover up
the actions of Father
Nicolás Aguilar (no
relation).
Nicolás Aguilar served
as a parish priest in
the central Mexican city
of Puebla in the 1980s,
under then bishop
Rivera, who transferred
him to Los Angeles,
where he served under
Mahony for less than a
year before fleeing to
Mexico in 1988. He faces
19 counts of child
molestation in southern
California, as well as
charges in Mexico, where
he remains a fugitive
from justice.
In early August, Rivera
was questioned for nine
hours in Mexico City by
representatives of the
U.S. court hearing the
case and Joaquín
Aguilar’s lawyers.
Mahony, the head of the
Catholic Church’s
largest archdiocese in
the United States, was
questioned last
Thursday.
According to Desde La
Fe, the lawyers of the
Chicago-based Survivors
Network of those Abused
by Priests (SNAP), which
is backing Joaquín
Aguilar, are motivated
by profit, since they
could expect to earn
"the high sum of 40
percent of any damages"
rewarded.
The article argues that
civil trials in the
United States are less
rigorous than criminal
trials in terms of
standard of proof, and
that compensation
payments are based more
on the feelings of the
jury than on an
objective decision.
Cardinal Rivera is
completely innocent,
says Desde La Fe, after
reiterating that Joaquín
Aguilar and his
attorneys are only after
money.
But anthropologist of
religion Gilberto
Morrillón told IPS that
the Catholic Church in
Mexico "is being
arrogant by reducing a
lawsuit for a cover-up
of child sex abuse to a
matter of mere money."
"It would seem that (the
Church leaders) do not
care about Aguilar’s
suffering or about the
guilt of their priest,"
he said.
"Pedophilia is a very
serious problem that has
been acknowledged by the
Church, which is why it
finally had to give in
and pay out millions of
dollars in damages," he
said.
Rivera claims that in
1987 he sent a letter to
Mahony warning him that
Father Aguilar might
have "homosexual
problems," although he
said he did so in code,
using euphemisms.
However, Mahony says he
never received such a
letter from Rivera, and
that he employed the
priest without being
aware of the allegations
he was facing in Mexico,
and fired him when he
was accused of sexually
abusing young members of
his congregation in Los
Angeles.
In July, the archdiocese
of Los Angeles agreed to
pay the landmark sum of
660 million dollars in
damages to 500 victims
of molestation by
priests.
A total of 10,667 people
alleged abuse by 4,392
priests in the United
States between 1950 and
2002, and
compensation-related
costs for the Catholic
Church amounted to 573
million dollars,
according to a 2004
study by the John Jay
College of Criminal
Justice, "The Nature and
Scope of the Problem of
Sexual Abuse of Minors
by Catholic Priests and
Deacons in the United
States".
The church sex abuse
scandal erupted in the
United States in 2002,
with former victims
speaking out and filing
around 1,200 lawsuits
since then.
Evidence, testimony and
confessions from bishops
in the United States as
well as Mexico have
shown that Catholic
priests accused of
sexually abusing minors
have frequently been
transferred from parish
to parish, sent to
rehabilitation centres,
or simply removed from
the scene by their
superiors to protect the
Church from scandal and
avoid court action.
In Mexico, the country
that has the second
largest number of
Catholics in the world
after Brazil, no one
knows for certain how
many priests have been
accused of child abuse,
but the Church claims
there have only been a
few isolated cases |
