PERU
Vice
By Simeon Tegel
May 13, 2016
The sexual abuse began one evening in a park, says Alvaro Urbina. He was 14.
A misfit at his expensive English-style school in Lima, Peru, Urbina’s recently separated mother was desperate to provide him with some direction. She enrolled him in Sodalicio de Vida Cristiana.
Sodalicio was a kind of Catholic boot camp, run by non-clerical volunteers, dedicated to transforming teenagers from the Peruvian elite into prominent priests or devout and influential lay members of society.
“We clicked a little,” says Urbina of the mentor twice his age who had been tasked with befriending the troubled adolescent. “He was quite arrogant, but funny and very assertive, and a bit of a homophobe.”
One evening, after taking out Urbina and several other boys for ice cream, the pair wound up alone in the park.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.