UNITED STATES
America Magazine
August 3, 2018
By J.D. Long-García
When he was 12, Dominic told his parents he did not want to be an altar server anymore. He had been serving at a parish in Southern California run by the ex-priest Michael Baker, who would later be convicted of molesting children.
“We need to learn to listen to our children,” Dominic’s mother, Virginia Zamora, told America. “They do have symptoms…. My son didn’t want to go to church again. He hated God.”
Her son was abused for years, she said. The ex-priest would tell her son: “No one is going to believe you. Who’s going to believe you over me?” Ms. Zamora said the revelations about Theodore McCarrick should be a wake-up call for Latinos, whom she described as reluctant to speak against the clergy.
“Hispanics believe it’s their cross to bear, that’s how they live with it,” said Ms. Zamora, who works with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP. “But it’s not our cross. We need to speak up.”
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