ROME (ITALY)
Crux
April 10, 2019
By Elise Harris
Peruvian investigative journalist Paola Ugaz, currently embattled in a criminal defamation case triggered by a complaint from an archbishop, now is being threatened with another defamation charge by representatives of two Catholic schools who say her reporting on the institutions is false.
On March 25 Ugaz published an article in Peruvian paper La Republica asserting a former head of the prestigious San Pedro Catholic boys’ school in Lima was not only guilty of physical abuse in the lay community to which he belonged, but he also failed to act when concerns about possibly inappropriate conduct at the school were raised.
Alfredo Draxl García Rossell, who formerly led San Pedro, was recently asked to step down as director of the Liceo Naval School following accusations from journalist José Enrique Escardó that Draxl had abused him physically and psychologically while both were members of the same religious community in 1987.
Both Draxl and Escardó are ex-members of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), a controversial Catholic organization that originated in Peru and whose founder, layman Luis Fernando Figari, has been accused of physical, psychological and sexual abuses and was prohibited by the Vatican in 2017 of having further contact with members of the group. Escardó left the SCV nearly 20 years ago, while Draxl left in 2018.
In her article, Ugaz noted that shortly after he left, Escardó published an article in Gente magazine saying that while he was in community, Draxl would force him to endure various abuses, one of which was to put a Swiss army knife to his neck and tell him to push against it. If he refused, he said Draxl would insist, yelling, “Push, faggot!” and then make him walk on his knees and kiss the feet of a statue of the Virgin Mary to ask for forgiveness.
When asked about the incident before a commission investigating institutional cases of abuse in Peru, Draxl said it was part of a game they played in which both men held knives and only lasted seconds. He called it a “stupid” mistake, but said he never intended to do violence.
Before leaving the Liceo Naval school, Draxl was director of San Pedro from 1997-2015. Both San Pedro and the girls school associated with it, Villa Caritas, are projects of the SCV and its women’s branch, the Marian Community of Reconciliation (MCR).
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