P. Segundo Fernández Haro

Segundo Asunción Fernández Haro, a priest of the Archdiocese of Trujillo in the La Libertad region of northern Peru, is accused, with another Trujillo priest, William Costa Serrano, of paying a teenage boy for sex at parties in the late 1990s. On April 16, 2016 a man who spoke to Connectas as “Andrés” filed a complaint with prosecutors saying he had been prostituted by the two priests. He said that between 1996 and 1998, when he was 16, Fernández Haro, Costa and three other priests organized or attended weekend night parties in Trujillo parishes and in a private house where they had sex with minors for money. He said he met Fernández Haro and Costa at one of these parties, that the priests paid him 20 or 30 soles (6–10 U. S. dollars) for sex, and that it occurred for two years. After the rapes and assaults, the victim, the priests would tell him nothing bad had happened.

The congressional commission on sexual abuse, as summarized by the website Sudaca, named a complainant, J.M.B.R., whose account matches that of “Andrés”: it says Fernández Haro, Costa and two Huamachuco priests invited him at age 15 to parties of alcohol, cigarettes and sex, held from 1996 to 1998 at the parish of El Buen Pastor in El Porvenir, at other places near Trujillo and at the private house, where priests met boys aged 15 to 17.

The Archdiocese of Trujillo suspended both priests on April 22, 2016 and set up a commission. The victims refused to testify before one commission member, Fr. Ricardo Angulo, whom they said they had seen at the parties where they were prostituted. In July 2020, in response to the publication of the Connectas piece, the archdiocese said that the Vatican had closed the case in June 2017 for lack of evidence, but that the priests were still suspended from ministry. The criminal cases were dismissed because of statutes of limitation.