UNITED STATES/LATIN AMERICA
Global Post
Fugitive Fathers: How the Vatican’s alleged sex abusers hide and preach in South America (VIDEO)
Will Carless on Sep 17, 2015
Jennifer’s memories were scattered and fleeting. They came suddenly, triggered by a smell or a glimpse of light dappled through stained glass. The aroma of freshly baked mince pies repulsed her nostrils. Scented candles, like the ones in the small San Antonio, Texas church she attended as an elementary school girl, made her gag with disgust.
Jennifer’s mother couldn’t understand these abrupt fits of revulsion, or the angry outbursts that accompanied them. For years, her daughter had been slipping into chaos, flunking classes, running with a bad crowd. The once happy-go-lucky child had changed beyond all recognition.
Then, one day, years after her life began unraveling, it all came pouring out.
“She finally came and told me that he had raped her,” the girl’s mother told GlobalPost. Therapy had dragged up Jennifer’s memories: a sudden blacking out, possibly from a drug she had been slipped, then dizzily regaining consciousness on a bed in the rectory. “I remember when I came to, it was just him and me and he was on top of me and I remember that stained-glass window and he did it in front of the Blessed Sacrament,” Jennifer told her mother.
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Jennifer — who is identified only by her first name because she still suffers trauma from the alleged incident — is by no means the only parishioner to accuse Father Federico Fernandez Baeza of abuse.
Fernandez arrived in San Antonio in the early 1980s. By 1983, prosecutors had charged him with exposing himself to two young girls in a local swimming pool. A year later, he had begun ritually abusing and raping two young boys in his care, according to a 1988 lawsuit filed by a local family. The abuse continued for two years, the lawsuit claimed.
The priest was never convicted of a crime. Instead the church negotiated a large cash settlement, and Fernandez promptly relocated to Colombia, where he continued working for the Catholic Church. In May, GlobalPost traced him to the picturesque seaside city of Cartagena. He’s currently a senior administrator and priest at a prestigious Catholic university, enjoying all the privilege, respect and unfettered access to young people that comes with being a member of the clergy. …
Last year, Pope Francis ostensibly took the US church’s policy global when he wrote a letter to every Catholic bishop in the world stating that they must abide by the zero tolerance rules.
But victim advocates say the pope’s message was an exercise in public relations, and that meaningful change is still a long way off.
Anne Barrett-Doyle is a founder of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks abusive priests around the world. She said that despite the pope’s letter, it’s still entirely unclear what standards bishops worldwide are now being held to. She said the rules in the US, though far from perfect, remain much more stringent than church doctrine elsewhere.
“It’s a lie, it’s absolutely false that there’s anything approaching zero tolerance in the emerging abuse policies around the world,” Barrett-Doyle said.
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