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The Abusers

By Horacio Verbitsky
Página 12
December 22, 2013

 [Translated into English by BishopAccountability.org. Click below to see original article in Spanish.]

http://www.bishop-accountability.org/Argentina/news/2013_12_22_Verbitsky_The_Abusers_MERCAU.pdf
 
The apology issued to the boys abused by a priest of the diocese of San Isidro is an unprecedented gesture. But it wasn’t spontaneous. Rather, it came as a result of the criminal trial in which the victims prioritized non-pecuniary reparations. The diocese, taking advantage of the boys’ vulnerability, reduced their compensation by almost half, and refused to sign any commitment. Casaretto made the victims recite a perverse prayer for the perpetrator [Mercau].
 
The apology from Oscar Ojea Quintana, bishop of San Isidro, to the four destitute boys, who were sexually abused between 2001 and 2005 by Father José Antonio Mercau, was not a spontaneous gesture, as suggested by the diocese in their statement. Rather, it was a direct outcome of the trial set in motion by the victims, said Federico Casiraghi, one of the lawyers who brought the case to court.
 
In their statement, the diocese attributed the compensation settlement to the judicial proceedings. But it presented as voluntary, and inspired by Pope Francis, their acknowledgment of responsibility and their public apology.
 
This doesn’t appear to be the case: the non-pecuniary reparations were the primary point of emphasis in the victims’ demands, as confirmed in an agreement that was signed on November 27 and authorized on December 12 by Judge Marta M. Capalbo. These reparations included the diocese of San Isidro’s commitment to “issuing a statement that expresses its willingness to make amends.”
 
All the rest is a publicity stunt by the Church of San Isidro, which media outlets of various sizes and ideologies enthusiastically listened to, competing with each other in their choice of praiseworthy adjectives. Still, they didn’t publish the dollar amount that the diocese has agreed to pay each of the four abused boys who had the courage to file a complaint.
 
There are more victims, but the diocese has done nothing to repair the damages incurred to them. In the criminal trial, Mercau accepted the charge against him for repeated and sustained corruption of minors, in all four cases, as well as the charges of sex abuse with repeated carnal access, sex abuse aggravated by egregious sexual submission, and [a final sex abuse charge that accounted for the applicable circumstances of the abuse, namely, the exploitation of a power relationship and preexisting cohabitation].
 
The case is now in the Appeals Court of Buenos Aires, since both sides appealed the 14-year sentence. Several witnesses said Mercau drank heavily at night and had “bloodshot eyes and alcohol on his breath.”  In that physical and mental state, “he took advantage of the power he had over the boys and flirted with them, kissed them on the mouth, touched their genitals over their clothes; undressed them, practiced oral sex on them, and in turn forced them to give him oral sex, and ultimately sexually, and forcibly, penetrated them.  On one occasion, he inserted his finger into the anus of one of the boys,” according to the case files at the Civil Court of San Isidro. In the words of the prosecution, “this sort of behavior exhibited by a priest wouldn’t have come to pass, nor would it have been prolonged over time, if his [Mercau’s] religious superior had promptly intervened, punishing or correcting his conduct.”

For a Packet of Cigarettes
 
Mercau was in charge of the parish of San Isidro for two decades, an unusually long time, until he was replaced in 2005 by Bishop Alcides Jorge Pedro Casaretto following a teacher’s denunciation, this after an abused boy told her what had happened when she asked why he was crying. Another boy who lived at the Home [for destitute children] said he witnessed how the priest took one of the four complainants to his room, and the boy returned with packet of cigarettes of the brand smoked by the priest, a treasure out of reach of those who had barely enough to eat.

Casaretto separated Mercau from his post, gave him refuge in a convent in Los Toldos, and appointed as his replacement Father Julio Béccar Varela, who played an important role in unmasking Mercau.
Several of the boys at the Home had addiction problems. Béccar Varela, in his testimony in the civil trial, said that few people could enter the Home, and that Mercau didn’t allow entry to the family members of the boys living there. He also said that the boys lived in fear and placed obstacles on the stairs so that Mercau would stumble and alert them that he was coming for them. Casaretto testified that he’d accompanied the victims’ families to the public prosecutor to file the criminal complaint for the “extremely serious sins that incurred great harm."

Béccar Varela (who later left the priesthood and married a woman) brought in a lay team to provide psychological support for the boys. This team included psychologists and social workers, who also accompanied the boys in their filing of the complaint at the public prosecutor’s office, and who denounced the pedophile priest during the court hearing, alluding to the Church’s attempt to conceal the existence of the trial.

“The boys were stigmatized; the community did not believe them, given the elevated importance given to Mercau’s pastoral work in the social sphere,” said Casiraghi. Witnesses for the defense praised Mercau’s work and tried to discredit the complainants. A female shopkeeper who taught catechism testified that another priest (not Béccar Varela) who accused Mercau had a child with a married catechism teacher and baptized the baby with the surname of his lover’s husband, without recognizing the child as his own.

500 Pesos for Each of Them

Casaretto contested the psychological support team’s intervention, which ruptured the pact of silence and led to the closing of the Home and the abandonment of the boys, after each of them was allotted 500 pesos a month for one year.

Because the services rendered by the support team were covered under a service contract, after Casaretto fired them without compensation, they brought a lawsuit against him in the labor courts.

A social worker who attended to the boys said one of them wet his bed after refusing to get up because this was the moment when “the priest took him to his room.” He also said the priest was very authoritarian, shouting at the boys and imposing punishments like leaving them without food or keeping them from going out on the weekend, but granting privileges to those who he hand-picked at night.

One teacher said that when the boys were quarreling, “fucked by the priest” was the insult they directed at one another.  Another social worker revealed that when Mercau had to testify at the prosecutor’s office in Pacheco, several teachers, in tears, asked him “why he’d done to the boys exactly what he’d taught them was wrong in the classes he taught on child abuse.”

The teachers then wrote to Casaretto, questioning the fact that Mercau had a defense attorney while the boys did not, and the fact that Mercau could receive visits from the boys at the convent in Los Toldos. They argued for Mercau to be taken to jail. Casaretto was furious with the teacher who delivered him the letter; he asked if they [the teachers] knew what took place inside a jail to those who committed Mercau’s crime.  Then he told the teacher that she was fired; the woman wept in despair. She told Casaretto that the teachers didn’t know what happened to the prisoners, but that they wanted the same justice and the same jail for everyone. “I couldn’t believe her pastor and guide would talk to her in such a way,” said the social worker.

During the civil trial, Casaretto didn’t make any concessions: alleging that the petition to answer interrogatories had been directed to the Diocese of San Isidro, not to their legal representative, he argued that “the legal requirement to produce the evidence had been nullified.” If not for the judge’s rejection [of the bishop’s argument], the proceedings would have ended with the victims’ defeat. Casaretto refused to acknowledge the existence of the facts, and with a cold and unyielding disposition maintained that [the alleged abuses] were unproven.  When he arrived to officiate Mass at the Home, where the abuses occurred, the boys asked him if he was on their side or Mercau’s, and "why he hadn’t come sooner to visit them.”

In response, Casaretto said that “as pastor he had to tend to and care for all his children,” and that he hoped they could forgive, asking them to “pray for Mercau’s healing,” which the victims considered sick and twisted. He also tried to shirk his responsibility, citing the operational and legal autonomy of the Home. That same day the teachers asked Casaretto why he’d allowed Mercau to remain at the Home for twenty years if he abused the boys and the teachers. Casaretto responded that no one ever told him as much. One teacher refuted this assertion, saying that she herself had informed him of the abuse a year before the first sex abuse complaint was filed.
[Mercau’s] house arrest at the convent in Los Toldos was overturned when it was shown that the priest had left the convent and been seen in the town of Ricardo Rojas.

A Mockery
 
The diocese adopted a different position when, in 2012, Oscar Ojea Quintana replaced Casaretto. Judge Capalbo, who has in his office a prayer card of Pope Bergoglio [Francis], proposed reconciliation between the parties. But the bishop refused to appear in court and only consented to see the victims at the diocesan office, outside the court’s jurisdiction. The boys accepted his coercive conditions, given the imbalance of power and their interest in [seeing the implementation] of policies to prevent recurrence.
 
At a private meeting, Ojea Quintana asked the boys for forgiveness. He said he understood the harm that the sex abuse had caused to their private lives and to the community. The boys criticized “the maltreatment and complicity” of his predecessor. The most determined of the four boys added that if Ojea Quintana didn’t adopt a different attitude, “we’ll know it's the same bullshit as Casaretto’s.” This emotional venting was met with Ojea’s stoic silence. Casiraghi considered his attitude to be sincere.
 
The other meetings at the diocesan offices were attended not by Ojea but by his legal representatives, Martín Alejandro Sánchez and Hernán Alejandro San Martín, who wrote: “Encouraging those who’ve been baptized to commit themselves to the social and pastoral mission of the Church, doesn’t assume that every glass of water in the name of Christ carries with it the civic responsibility of the diocese, or that the individual who is consecrated fulfills with purity the Church’s mission.” [The statement] dilutes the severity of the crime committed [by Mercau].
 
Among the non-pecuniary reparations and policies to prevent recurrence, the victims asked that the diocese publish in a national newspaper an acknowledgement of their civic responsibility, as well as an apology. They also asked that the topic of sexual abuse and the Convention on the Rights of the Child become part of the seminary curriculum for priestly formation; that the diocese establish an system to monitor the psychology of priests, specifically, their sexual inclination toward minors; and to deprive Mercau of his ecclesiastical status.
 
The diocese agreed to issue an apology, but refused to publish it in a media outlet. It would issue the apology later, as though it were a voluntary act, and do it on its own terms, which were of self-praise. The diocese also said it would prohibit Mercau from exercising his ministry, independent of the canonical process in which the Vatican intervenes.
 
The boys, out of distrust, demanded that the diocese put this commitment in writing. The diocese countered that there are already materials on the topic of sexual abuse that are used in the formation of seminarians, in addition to an existing intervention protocol. But it didn’t show the boys proof of either of these. The boys said that, based on their experience, the materials and the protocol could be improved upon. The diocese objected.

The judge requested that Pope Francis be notified of the agreement, so that nothing similar happened again. The diocese representatives refused, and Capalbo didn’t insist.  Shortly thereafter the settlement was negotiated.
 
The boys demanded 1,000,000 pesos for each of them. The diocese, taking advantage of their situation of vulnerability, made a counter-offer of 600,000 pesos, payable in three installments.
 
The final meeting “was a mockery,” said Casiraghi. The lawyers announced that the diocese wouldn’t sign the agreement and should be taken at its word. “This isn’t a confessional, it’s a court case,” Casiraghi told them.
 
The diocese’s main objective was to avoid an unfavorable ruling, and also avoid having to sign any document.  To exert pressure, San Juan, [another of the diocese’s lawyers], expressed uncertainty that the agreed-upon 600,000 pesos would be paid.
 
The four boys are children of divorced parents, some alcoholics and violent, who kicked them out of the house. A few of the boys have siblings who work as prostitutes and/or use drugs. One of the boys lived on the street with his father; another successively with two different aunts and his grandmother. A third boy was beaten by his mother’s partner.
 
Presently, one of the boys is in a stable relationship, and a volunteer firefighter. Another is unemployed, has a girlfriend, and has taken computer classes. The third is a temporary employee at a factory dining hall.  The fourth got married, has a two-year-old daughter, and is employed as a janitor. None of them was able or wanted to extend the litigation several more years, which would have been on top of the seven-year criminal trial, and eight-year civil case.  And so they relented.
 
Presenting this sordid episode as an act of altruism is pure hyperbole, unsupported by the cold, hard facts.
 




 
 


 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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