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	Priest Seeks Truth Hearing By Karlon N. Rama Sun.Star [Philippines] July 13, 2007 http://www.sunstar.com.ph/static/ceb/2007/07/13/news/priest.seeks.truth.hearing.html The priest accused of lascivious conduct while hearing the confession of high school students attending a seminar has surfaced to answer the charges. His explanation: he is just a "jolly kind of person" and was merely making the students feel at ease. He said the students misinterpreted his actions that were meant to comfort and put them at ease while giving their confessions. Pinoy Votes: Sun.Star Election 2007 Coverage View here the list of local winners Fr. Benedicto Ejares, assisted by lawyer Antonio Bacalso II, submitted his counter-affidavit to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor. The priest is now ready for a clarificatory hearing and even urged that one be called to "ferret out the truth," said Bacalso. In a clarificatory hearing, the prosecutor summons both parties and questions them to explain certain points in the preliminary investigation. The parties, through the prosecutor, may also question each other. But a lawyer has pointed out that if indeed "Fr. Ben" felt that he did nothing wrong, why did he disappear when the charges were raised? "Whatever justifications he is raising is negated by the fact that he hid after the allegations against him were first raised, to the extent that the Archdiocese of Cebu said they didn't know where he was," said lawyer Alvin Butch Cañares, the Cebu City Hall consultant who oversaw the filing of the complaint for the City Council's social welfare committee. Seminar Based on the document's notations, the affidavit was executed before Bacalso last June 14, 2007. Ejares didn't go to the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor to make his oath personally, which is the usual practice in preliminary investigations. The community tax certificate he used in the affidavit was dated Dec. 20, 2006 and was issued here in Cebu City. Based on the complaint against him, the students' confessions were heard last Nov. 14, 2006 as part of a Life in the Spirit Seminar hosted by the Oasis of Love for students of the Abellana National High School. The students raised their complaints against the priest a few days later though a local television station. They formalized their complaint before the Department of Social Welfare and Development, which turned over the case to the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) by early January. "Fr. Ben was nowhere to be found," Cañares said. The NBI, for its part, began the fact-finding investigation on the case and filed it with the Office of the Cebu City Prosecutor only last March 11, even though it sent him a subpoena as early as Feb. 24. That subpoena didn't get answered. "That doesn't seem like the actions of a person protesting that he is innocent," Cañares said. Barriers In the counter-affidavit, Ejares said the allegations have been "serious and destructive" to him, his family and the Catholic Church. These were a "blatant exaggeration" and "outright false and malicious." "To set the records straight, I never tried to sexually abuse the seven complainants as they claim to be; what happened was a graphic case of misinterpretation and misunderstanding because all my actions during the questioned confession as geared towards making them feel at ease and encouraging them to tell their sins openly," he said. He said there were "patent fear and hesitation" among the students, so he "strove hard to take away those barriers." "People say that I am a jolly kind of person so I wanted to put this trait to good use by making them (penitents) understand and feel that the confession could be casual, like carrying on an ordinary conversation with a friend," he said. "I have experimented on this in the past and I have found out that this is effective compared to the usual type of confessions wherein penitents are very stiff and nervous," he added. Comfort He said he didn't lasciviously touch anyone, explaining that he was merely "comforting" the complaining students. "I just wanted to console them for they were sorry for their sins," he said. The comforting, he admitted, sometimes took the form of touching the students in the arm, shoulders and back. "I don't know whether or not in the process I accidentally touched their bras for I was deeply concentrated on giving them advice; but this time I have to state that there never was malice involved," he said. Perhaps, he argued, the complaining students were just not used to his style. He attached the affidavits of three Abellana National High School students who also took part in the seminar and the subsequent confession—but who all noted that nothing wrong happened and that everything went on normally.
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