P. Tulio Montenegro Infante

Tulio Armando Montenegro Infante was a priest of the Prelature of Huamachuco in northern Peru in 2016 when he was accused by at least four men of sexually abusing them as boys or young men between 1988 and 2001, in parishes of the prelature and in the archdiocese of Trujillo.

One victim was a secondary-school pupil and altar boy when Montenegro sexually assaulted him in 1988. Another was a seminarian of 18.  A third victim was a young man who lived in the priest’s parish and says he was repeatedly raped from 1995 to 2001. The fourth victim was a teenager in 1996-1998 attending parties in Trujillo where priests paid minors for sex.

One victim says he reported Montenegro to Bishop Sebastián Ramis in 1991. (Ramis ran the prelature of Huamachuco from 1990 to 2018.) Another says Ramis told him not to report and offered to send him to study in Spain. A group of whistleblower priests confronted Ramis in January 2016 about Montenegro and other abusive clerics. Ramis set up a commission of inquiry, but only after a TV program aired the accusations in February 2016.

Ramis says he suspended the accused priests in March 2016. His successor, apostolic administrator Bishop Cisneros, provisionally lifted Montenegro’s suspension in August 2018, then in April 2019 barred him permanently from public ministry, while telling two accusers that their statements were contradictory and exaggerated. The penalty was under appeal at the Vatican in 2020.

The criminal complaints were time-barred or closed for lack of evidence, according to ACI Prensa and the congressional commission.

Montenegro denied the allegations. Banned from public ministry, he was head of a state-run high school in Pataz as of August 2020.