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	Charges of Cross-Border Church Abuses Continue Foreign Correspondency June 23, 2009 http://foreigncorrespondency.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/charges-of-cross-border-church-abuses-continue/ MEXICO CITY - A victims' group said Thursday that it was filing a new lawsuit in Los Angeles, California, against Mexican and U.S. church officials accused of sheltering a suspected pedophile priest. The lawsuit accuses Mexico City Cardinal Norberto Rivera of conspiring with Roman Catholic officials in the United States to shelter Nicolas Aguilar, a Mexican priest wanted in California for 19 felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child. This is the third lawsuit filed by the group, Survivor's Network of Those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, against the Catholic Church for allegedly protecting Aguilar. Two previous lawsuits filed in Los Angeles against the Mexican cardinal by Mexican citizens were dismissed in 2007. This time, however, the unnamed plaintiff is a U.S. citizen. "In this case it was a North American boy molested in North American territory," said Jose Bonilla, a lawyer for SNAP. Bonilla said he was "practically 100 percent sure" that the plaintiff, identified only as John Doe, would have his day in court. "But it's going to be a long process," he said. In addition to Cardinal Rivera, the lawsuit charges the archdiocese of Tehuacan in the Mexican state of Puebla, where Rivera worked at the time, the archdiocese of Los Angeles and the California Department of Education with failing to protect the plaintiff from Rev. Aguilar. Bonilla said the abuse occurred in 1988 while Aguilar was in Los Angeles. He said the new lawsuit will show Rivera transferred the priest to Los Angeles earlier that year even though he knew he had abused children in Mexico. Aguilar fled back to Mexico nine months later, where he continued working as a priest for years despite attempts to extradite him to the United States. He currently remains at large in Mexico. SNAP officials said they hoped the civil lawsuit might eventually lead to criminal convictions for church officials who had obstructed justice. "We think that there is at least some hope now," said Joaquin Aguilar Mendez, SNAP's Mexico Director and no relation to the accused priest. "We know that we can't have justice as long as Nicolas, who abused so many, remains free," he said. "No one has looked for him. I understand he is still working. He is still protected. But at least those who acted so negligently knowing who he was will pay for what they have done." Aguilar Mendez was the plaintiff in the original lawsuit against the priest. In that lawsuit, also filed in Los Angeles against Rivera, Aguilar Mendez says Aguilar raped him in Mexico City in 1994. Aguilar Mendez was 12 years old at the time of the alleged crime. Aguilar Mendez said his own case against Aguilar is still pending in California. He said new evidence, including the taped testimony of Rivera and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony, shows the two cardinals lied about their knowledge of the priest's abusive past. The archdiocese of Los Angeles, the largest in the U.S., settled almost 500 abuse cases for $660 million in July 2007, by far the largest payout in the church's sexual abuse scandal. Aguilar Mendez said a dozen of those cases were against Rev. Aguilar, but that his case and the case of the unnamed U.S. plaintiff were not among them. "This is not over," said Aguilar Mendez of his long struggle to bring the priest to justice. "I hope in the near future to finally see him seated (in court), being judged."
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