GUAM
Pacific News Center
[with video]
Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News
August 2, 2016
Expert: Apuron is a ‘serial child molester’
Another former altar boy told senators Monday morning that a priest and two other church members sexually abused him in the 1950s.
He is the fifth person since May to publicly accuse Guam clergy of sexual assault. Three former Agat altar boys since May have accused Archbishop Anthony Apuron of sexually abusing them in the 1970s, when he was parish priest. The mother of a dead former altar boy also has accused Apuron of molesting her son in the 1970s.
Leo B. Tudela, now 73, said he was sexually abused on three separate occasions by three people, including a priest, connected to the Archdiocese of Agana when he came to Guam in 1956.
Tudela testified during a public hearing on a bill that would lift the statute of limitations on civil lawsuits against those who sexually abuse children.
“I have cried on many occasions since then and continue to have memory flashbacks of the horrible things that happened to me,” said Tudela, who broke down several times as he narrated his ordeal. “I feel cheated and molested by people who were supposed to be my protector, comforter and God’s guardian angels.”
The sexual abuse happened after Tudela, who lived in Saipan, was invited to come to Guam to attend Catholic school, he said. He was 13 years old.
He was born and raised in Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and served as an altar boy at Mount Carmel Church in Chalan Kanoa, starting in 1954. Two other boys from Saipan and Tinian were invited to Guam at the time, he said.
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