P. William Costa Serrano

William José Costa Serrano, a priest of the Archdiocese of Trujillo in the La Libertad region of northern Peru, was accused, with another Trujillo priest, Segundo Fernández Haro, of paying a teenage boy for sex at parties in the late 1990s.

On April 16, 2016, a man identified in the major Connectas exposé 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 age 16, Costa, Fernández Haro, and three other priests organized weekend night parties in Trujillo parishes and in a private house where they had sex with minors for money. He said he met Costa and Fernández Haro at one of these parties and that the priests paid him 20 or 30 soles (6–10 U.S. dollars) for sex. He said they told him that nothing bad had happened, and that what happened there stayed there. The sex parties continued for two years.

According to the website Sudaca, the Congressional commission on sexual abuse identified a victim, J.M.B.R., whose account matches that of “Andrés:” that account says Costa, Fernández Haro 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 youths aged 15 to 17.

The archdiocese says it learned of the criminal complaint on April 22, 2016, suspended both priests that day, and the next day set up one commission to investigate the victims’ allegations and another commission to cooperate with the civil authorities.

When “Andrés” testified to the archdiocese’s commission on May 14, 2016, he found that Fr. Ricardo Angulo Bazauri, whom he and another victim said they had seen at the parties, was among those handling his case; the two refused to testify before Angulo, and a Huamachuco priest, José Ignacio Gómez, took their statements instead.

At the end of May 2016, leaflets reproducing the criminal complaint against Costa and Fernández Haro were handed out at the Corpus Christi celebrations in Trujillo, which led to arrests and to a criminal complaint by Angulo against the complainants.

In July 2020, the archdiocese said in a public statement that it had been told by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in June 2017 that it had closed the case of both priests. The archdiocese said the alleged abuse had taken place in the 1990s under a previous archbishop, Manuel Prado Pérez-Rosas, SJ, that there was no record of it, and that the archdiocese had received no concrete complaint since Archbishop Miguel Cabrejos Vidarte became archbishop of Trujillo in 1999. It also said that the precautionary suspension of both priests from all ministerial duties remained in force.

On July 16, 2020, Archbishop Cabrejos, who at that time also headed the Peruvian bishops’ conference and the Latin American bishops’ council (CELAM), told Latin American bishops’ conferences that both the Vatican and the local prosecutor had closed the cases in 2017, and that La República/Connectas had withdrawn its major article; but ACI Prensa found the article still online, and its author said no one had told her of any withdrawal.

The Congressional commission chaired by Alberto de Belaunde asked the archdiocese what Cabrejos had done about the case. De Belaunde said Cabrejos never answered.

The Sánchez Carrión prosecutor’s office closed the complaint by “Andrés” as time-barred, according to La República; Costa said the Huamachuco prosecutor closed the investigation for lack of conclusive evidence and because more than 20 years had passed.

Sudaca, drawing on the congressional report, says the cases of the five victims it examined, J.M.B.R.’s among them, were closed as time-barred or for lack of evidence.

Costa denies the accusation: he told Connectas that “Andrés” accused him in order to get money and that he had demanded a large sum to keep the case out of the media (“No le puedo decir la cantidad, pero era demasiado”).

In July 2020 ACI Prensa tried without success to question Cabrejos about the two suspended priests. As last reported in 2020, Costa was still suspended from ministry.