South America has become a safe haven for the Catholic Church’s alleged
child molesters. The Vatican has no comment.
September
18, 2015 · 4:45 PM
Accused child sex abuser Father Jan Van Dael plays with the hair of a
boy collecting a soup donation, in a slum
Jennifer’s memories were scattered and fleeting. They came suddenly,
triggered by a smell or a glimpse of light dappled through stained glass. The
aroma of freshly baked mince pies repulsed her nostrils. Scented candles, like
the ones in the small San Antonio, Texas church she attended as an elementary
school girl, made her gag with disgust.
Jennifer’s mother couldn’t understand these abrupt fits of revulsion, or
the angry outbursts that accompanied them. For years, her daughter had been
slipping into chaos, flunking classes, running with a bad crowd. The once
happy-go-lucky child had changed beyond all recognition.
Then, one day,
years after her life began unraveling, it all came pouring out.
“She finally came
and told me that he had raped her,” the girl’s mother told GlobalPost. Therapy
had dragged up Jennifer’s memories: a sudden blacking out, possibly from a drug
she had been slipped, then dizzily regaining consciousness on a bed in the
rectory. “I remember when I came to, it was just him and me and he was on top
of me and I remember that stained-glass window and he did it in front of the
Blessed Sacrament,” Jennifer told her mother.
Jennifer — who is
identified only by her first name because she still suffers trauma from the
alleged incident — is by no means the only parishioner to accuse Father
Federico Fernandez Baeza of abuse.
Fernandez arrived
in San Antonio in the early 1980s. By 1983, prosecutors had charged him with
exposing himself to two young girls in a local swimming pool. A year later, he
had begun ritually abusing and raping two young boys in his care, according to
a 1988 lawsuit filed by a local family. The abuse continued for two years, the
lawsuit claimed.
The priest was
never convicted of a crime. Instead the church negotiated a large cash
settlement, and Fernandez promptly relocated to Colombia, where he continued
working for the Catholic Church. In May, GlobalPost traced him to the
picturesque seaside city of Cartagena. He’s currently a senior administrator
and priest at a prestigious Catholic university, enjoying all the privilege,
respect and unfettered access to young people that comes with being a member of
the clergy.
Fernandez is just
one of scores of Catholic priests who have been accused of abusing children in
the United States and Europe, but who have avoided accountability simply by
moving to a less-developed country.
Boats bob next to the tiny fishing village of Puerto Huarmey, Peru.
Even as Pope
Francis has touted reform of the Vatican’s safeguards against child abuse,
GlobalPost has found that the Catholic Church has allowed allegedly abusive
priests to slip off to parts of the world where they would face less
scrutiny from prosecutors and the media.
In a yearlong
investigation, we tracked down and confronted five such priests. All were able
to continue working for the church despite serious accusations against them.
When we found them, all but one continued to lead Mass, mostly in remote, poor
communities in South America.
Some of these men
faced criminal investigations, but went abroad without charges being brought
against them. One of the priests admitted to GlobalPost that he had molested a
13-year-old boy, and acknowledged that he can never work again in the US. He
continues to preach in a small Peruvian fishing village. Another is currently
under investigation by authorities in Brazil for a string of alleged
molestations, including accusations in the poor neighborhoods where for two
decades he ran a home for street children — with the support of the
Catholic Church.
GlobalPost interviewed one diocese leader in these communities, but was
otherwise not granted interviews with local church officials. And despite
protracted efforts and discussions with church press officers, neither the
Vatican nor the chairman of a new papal commission set up specifically to
tackle church child abuse would speak with us.
For advocates and
attorneys who have studied abusive Catholic priests for decades, the flight of
these fathers overseas represents just the latest chapter in a long story of
deceit, collusion and church-sponsored impunity for child abusers.
“As developed
countries find it tougher to keep predator priests on the job, bishops are
increasingly moving them to the developing world where there’s less vigorous
law enforcement, less independent media and a greater power differential
between priests and parishioners,” said David Clohessy, national director and
spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP.
“This is massive, and my suspicion is that it’s becoming more and more
pronounced.”
“I’m a pedophile, in the real sense”
Father Jan Van Dael holds onto a strand of a boy's hair as he collects
free soup. "Look at his hair!" the priest calls to reporters.
The boy runs along the trash-strewn potholed dirt street, his long
copper-colored hair flowing behind him. Father Jan Van Dael, 76, reaches out to
touch his arm, moving close.
“He reminds me of a
boy who was in my house in Rio de Janeiro,” Van Dael says, referring to the
orphanage he used to run in the 1980s.
The boy wriggles
free and lines up to fill his pot from the containers of soup that Van Dael and
his volunteers have brought to this small slum just outside the
rough-and-tumble city of Caucaia, in Brazil’s northeast.
Van Dael, an
avuncular, slightly doddery Belgian priest, seems deeply affectionate toward
pre-adolescent boys. He loves to take their photographs. He reaches for
children he barely knows, like a father hungry for attention.
Back in the late
1980s, Van Dael moved from Europe to Brazil, first settling in Rio de Janeiro.
After a falling out with the local diocese (Van Dael says church officials
objected to his working with poor street children whom they deemed criminals),
the Belgian was asked to leave, and ended up in windswept Caucaia, a few miles
from the crime-ridden city of Fortaleza.
Taking advantage of
Brazil’s extraordinary exchange rates at the time, which greatly favored the US
dollar and European currencies, the “gringo priest” set up a new orphanage for
abandoned and troubled street kids.
He called it
“Esperança da Criança,” or Children’s Hope.
But the home's
whitewashed walls — which Van Dael hung with dozens of photographs he took of
young boys — appear to have borne witness to plenty of misery, along with any
hope.
According to Brazilian
prosecutors, Van Dael is currently under investigation by both the Belgian and
Brazilian federal authorities, an inquiry that adds to a litany of child abuse
accusations against Van Dael on two continents.
Last year, a Dutch television station interviewed
two men who claimed Van Dael fondled them at church and at a Catholic summer
camp in Belgium in the early 1970s. A federal prosecutor in Fortaleza told the
station that there had also been several complaints of sexual abuse against Van
Dael over the last 10 years.
Father Jan Van Dael shows off his collection of portraits — most of
young boys — on the veranda outside his home. The building once housed orphans,
but Van Dael closed that operation down two years ago.
In 2011, two former
interns at Van Dael’s orphanage told the Belgian media that children there said
the priest had abused them. And the head of a local government child protection
agency in Caucaia told GlobalPost he had received a complaint about Van Dael
back in 2008. The complaint languished, the official said, because the agency
didn’t have the staff or resources to investigate it.
Van Dael has been
suspected of pedophilia for years. Meanwhile, his career as a priest has
flourished in the Archdiocese of Fortaleza.
His services are in
constant demand. He said he sometimes celebrates Mass six times a weekend in
the poor neighborhoods of Caucaia. When we visited, Van Dael led services at
two different churches and handed out soup to children, something he said he
does every day.
Everywhere he went, Father Jan was
met with reverence and respect.
In a lengthy
interview, he told GlobalPost he has never been sexually attracted to children.
He said all the accusations against him are lies, drummed up by abusive parents,
envious competitors, or university students who don’t understand the world. He
compared himself to Jesus Christ, saying he was a rebel, a trailblazer and a
true humanitarian.
“Literally,
pedophilia comes from the Greek, 'pidos' meaning child and 'philia' meaning
friendship with children,” Van Dael said. “In the real sense of the word I’m a
pedophile.”
The archbishop of
Fortaleza, who has control over which priests celebrate Mass within the
archdiocese, initially agreed to an interview. But after we confronted Van Dael
about the accusations against him, the archbishop said he couldn’t meet with
GlobalPost.
The Catholic Church
has a long history of secrecy in matters related to sex abuse allegations,
reaffirmed by a 2001 confidential apostolic letter written
by Pope John Paul II.
The letter clarified
that all cases of sexual abuse by priests were to be handled by the
Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, an internal affairs unit of the
Catholic Church, which was then headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became
pope in 2005). The letter also reasserted that all such cases must be kept
strictly confidential under the “pontifical secret,” a move that has been
heavily criticized ever since.
In August, Livia
Maria de Sousa, a federal prosecutor in Fortaleza, told GlobalPost that her
staff had interviewed three people who formerly lived in Van Dael’s orphanage,
as part of an ongoing investigation against the priest. She said the interviews
had uncovered no new evidence against Van Dael, and added that investigators
were also scheduled to interview the priest in September.
De Sousa lamented
that abusive priests too often come to Brazil in search of prey. She said
investigating child sex abuse within the church can be frustratingly
slow and difficult — especially when suspects are revered as moral
icons, and victims are too young to understand sexual contact.
“Brazil is a
country where Catholicism is very strong and present, and where the people
really respect the church, priests, bishops and all religious authorities,” she
said. “So it’s very difficult for a child to understand an act, a touch, that
might have a sense of exploitation and abuse, and that is in fact abuse.”
Van Dael closed
down Esperança da Criança a couple of years ago, when the Brazilian
authorities changed their policies for housing troubled children. But he
continues to come into daily contact with vulnerable children.
In doing so, Van
Dael draws his legitimacy from the Archdiocese of Fortaleza and, ultimately,
the Vatican. Despite years of accusations and investigations, Van Dael said he
has never faced a formal investigation by the church.
Zero tolerance, double standard
Father Paul Madden
is an admitted child molester.
In the 1970s,
Madden, who was then a priest in the Diocese of Jackson, Mississippi, took a
trip to Ireland with a 13-year-old boy in his parish. During that trip,
according to a lawsuit filed by the victim in 2002, Madden “repeatedly molested
and raped” the boy.
Father Paul Madden offers communion to a congregant in Puerto Huarmey,
Peru.
“Since 1973 I have
been plagued with remorse and guilt for my molestation of your son,” reads the
letter. “There is no excuse for my actions and I assume responsibility for them
as a humble penitent.”
In 2003 — soon
after the victim’s second lawsuit was dismissed because too much time had
passed — Madden joined the Diocese of Chimbote, Peru. In April, GlobalPost
found him celebrating his weekly Mass in the tiny, scruffy fishing village of
Puerto Huarmey.
Approached after
the service, Madden again admitted the abuse, though he wouldn’t elaborate on
what occurred.
“Something
happened, I was drunk, and I had never drank before in my life, it was the
first time ever, and I woke up in the middle of the night, and … yeah, well,
something happened,” he told GlobalPost.
Madden expressed
remorse for his actions, but said that, in keeping with church teachings, God
has forgiven him for his sins.
“I feel quite
confident in the mercy of God, and I feel quite confident that God forgives all
sin,” he said. “If I’m guilty, I’m forgiven.”
Still, he’s under
no illusions that he’s been pardoned in the eyes of the American public, or
even the American Catholic Church. Asked if he could return to work as a priest
in the US, Madden, who is originally from Ireland, was clear.
“I don’t think so,
no, because of this ‘zero policy.’ And this was before — that’s not just from Pope
Francis, this came out years before in the US.”
The small fishing village of Puerto Huarmey, Peru, a few hours drive
north of Lima. The church where Father Paul Madden celebrates mass is on the
right.
“When even a single
act of sexual abuse by a priest or deacon is admitted or is established after
an appropriate process in accord with canon law, the offending priest or deacon
will be removed permanently from ecclesiastical ministry,” reads one of the
rules approved by the Vatican after the conference.
But victim
advocates say the pope’s message was an exercise in public relations, and that
meaningful change is still a long way off.
Anne Barrett-Doyle
is a founder of BishopAccountability.org, which tracks abusive priests around
the world. She said that despite the pope’s letter, it’s still entirely unclear
what standards bishops worldwide are now being held to. She said the rules in the
US, though far from perfect, remain much more stringent than church doctrine
elsewhere.
“It’s a lie, it’s
absolutely false that there’s anything approaching zero tolerance in the
emerging abuse policies around the world,” Barrett-Doyle said.
The church where Father Paul Madden celebrates Mass, in Puerto Huarmey,
Peru. Father Madden admitted to molesting a 13-year-old boy, and told
GlobalPost he could never again work in the US.
Interviewed in the
city of Chimbote, Vicar General Juan Roger Rodriguez Ruiz, the diocese'
second-in-command, said that Bishop Angel Simon Piorno was shocked to
learn from GlobalPost about Madden’s past, and would scrutinize the priest in
light of the zero tolerance policy.
“Some may find it
hard, even painful, that the bishop has to investigate a priest, but it has to
be done,” Rodriguez said. He added that Madden would be suspended if necessary.
However, in
mid-August a member of Madden’s parish confirmed to GlobalPost by phone that
the priest continued to preach every Sunday. We attempted to confirm this with
Rodriguez, but our email and phone calls went unreturned.
Disgraced in Minnesota, welcomed back
to Ecuador
To find Father
Francisco “Fredy” Montero, one has to negotiate a deadly, precipitous mountain
pass — so high that wisps of cloud sweep past — searching for a village that
locals describe vaguely as “very remote” and “out there somewhere in the
tropics.”
The road, gouged in
places by great landslides, weaves down from chilly highlands to the steamy,
banana-stuffed interior of central Ecuador’s Bolivar province. Here, an hour’s
drive from the nearest small town and several hours from the nearest big city,
is the hamlet of Las Naves.
The road to Las Naves snakes through unpaved mountain passes littered
with rocks.
On Google Maps, Las
Naves appears as a ring of green jungle. There are no streets, landmarks or
homes. It’s wildly different from the broad avenues of Minneapolis, Minnesota,
where not long ago Montero made a name for himself as a gregarious priest, church
journalist, part-time radio DJ and accused child molester.
Montero, then in
his mid-30s, had been a popular addition to the Archdiocese of Minneapolis.
A quick talker with
an easy smile, he charmed the local Hispanic population, helped to found a
Spanish-language church newspaper and installed himself as a fixture in his
adopted homeland.
Father Francisco “Fredy” Montero's mugshot.
But five years after arriving in a Minnesota blizzard, Montero’s
cheerful façade fell apart. In 2007, an official at the archdiocese reported to
the Minneapolis Police Department that Montero had been accused of abusing a
4-year-old girl. Detectives arrested the young priest, seizing his computer and
other possessions.
“Father Fredy,” as
he was known to parishioners, was hardly the archetypal pious priest. For
months, according to a police report,
he had been sleeping with at least one adult churchgoer — a witness to the
abuse — who later told police she and the priest would have sex on Montero’s
desk on a daily basis.
The little girl,
who is not being identified at the request of her mother, was interviewed by a
forensic psychologist and by other experts with the Hennepin County Child
Protection Services. They concluded Montero had, indeed, abused the girl.
Later, when Montero appealed that finding, the agency upheld it, according to a diocese document obtained by
GlobalPost.
Police
investigators searched through Montero’s computer, looking for evidence of
child pornography. But prosecutors eventually decided there simply wasn’t
enough evidence to charge the priest with a crime. Almost immediately, Montero
flew back to Ecuador.
Sgt. Darren
Blauert, the Minneapolis detective who investigated Montero, said although
there were no charges brought, something happened to the child that was “very
inappropriate.” He expressed serious concern that Montero had been allowed to
continue to work with children.
“There was enough
that I would be very concerned that this person was continuing what he was
doing,” Blauert said.
GlobalPost's trip
to far-flung Guaranda, where Montero is now based, serves as a reminder of what
a huge, sprawling institution the Catholic Church is, and how challenging it
might seem to police priests who span the globe.
The city of Guaranda, Ecuador, the capital of the mountainous Bolivar
Province.
But thanks to the
internet, for many priests a background check is only a few clicks away.
BishopAccountability.org
maintains a database of more than 6,400 clerics who have been credibly accused
of child sexual abuse in the United States. The database contains extensive
information about Montero, Madden, Van Dael and many other priests who
have avoided scrutiny by simply getting on a plane and flying to a new
country.
In Montero’s case,
there was no need to even double-check the priest’s background in those online
records. Court documents show that the Minnesota accusations followed him to
Ecuador.
A dossier sent from
the Archdiocese of Minneapolis to Guaranda warned the South American diocese of
Montero’s past. Archdiocese officials also reported the alleged abuse to the
Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s internal investigators.
But Montero was
apparently able to shrug off his past once he arrived back in his native
Ecuador.
After a brief
hiatus, during which he said he was employed as a journalist, Montero was
placed in a succession of remote local parishes in the diocese of Guaranda,
where he continued to celebrate Mass and interact extensively with young
people. He eventually stopped working as a priest a couple of years ago
— not because of the accusations against him or the potential harm he
might inflict on children, but because he decided to run for mayor of Las
Naves. The local bishop decided politics and priesthood weren’t a good mix, he
said.
One of the main streets of Guaranda, a city in central Ecuador and the
home diocese of Father Montero.
Bishop Angel
Sanchez, who welcomed Montero back to Guaranda, now heads a different diocese
in Ecuador. He said in a telephone interview that at the time Montero returned
to Ecuador he was aware of the accusations against the priest in the US. But
Sanchez said he was confident of Montero’s innocence, since the case
against him was “not concrete,” and the priest was never criminally charged.
The bishop also
confirmed that, to his knowledge, Montero was not investigated further by the
Vatican after arriving in Ecuador.
Victim advocates
say Montero’s case is a textbook example of how the Catholic Church is shirking
its responsibility to protect children.
Zero tolerance
policies are one thing, but without meaningful implementation by local bishops
— the Vatican’s footmen and enforcers in communities — church doctrines
make little difference, according to Clohessy, the director of SNAP.
“There’s no checks
and balances,” Clohessy said. “It’s like having speed limits with no cops.”
A reporter confronts Montero after spotting him driving by with a truck
full of young people.
Minneapolis attorney Jeff Anderson agrees. Anderson, who has spent three
decades suing priests and church officials for covering up child abuse, brought
a lawsuit against Montero in 2007 and has kept track of the Ecuadorean priest
in recent years.
Anderson said the
onus to protect children was on the bishops of Guaranda and Minneapolis, whom
he claims let Montero flee to Ecuador without being held accountable. And the
ultimate responsibility for protecting children from predator priests, he says,
lies with the Vatican.
“Until this pope
removes top officials in these crimes and sends a message that he is serious,
nothing seems to change,” Anderson said. “Until this pope turns over all the
documents and all the offenders who they know are offenders and are in ministry
and turn them over to law enforcement across the globe, there seems to be
little that is being done or changed.”
David Joles, the
father of the young girl whom Montero allegedly abused, finds it hard to talk
about his disgust for the Catholic Church, and the pain Montero’s actions
brought him and his family.
“Sometimes she would bring him up out of the blue,” he said. “She’d be
riding in the car, sitting in the back seat and say things like, ‘Father Fredy
kissed me on the lips.’”
In 2011, Joles’
daughter died from an inoperable brain tumor. She was 8 years old.
In the pain and
anguish he’s had to endure since her passing, Joles is sickened that the man he
says so bruised his daughter’s short life is still walking free, and could return
to the pulpit at any time.
“I began to see the
way [church officials] operate,” Joles said. “It was big business and from
their point of view it seemed like the individual was always secondary to the
business, and [my daughter] was just but one kid, one individual who had been
harmed by a priest, but that Catholicism and the church was more important than
people like [her].”
Back in Ecuador,
GlobalPost confronted Montero.
After waiting for
hours in Las Naves, we eventually spotted him on the narrow road leading into
town. His Chevy pickup truck was overflowing with children, whom he had just
taken to a local soccer tournament.
Initially
reluctant, Montero eventually agreed to an interview on the side of the street
in Las Naves. He stressed that he wasn’t hiding from anyone, and said he’d
spent years working with children without any other accusations. He denied that
the alleged abuse took place.
“There was an
accusation, but there was no evidence,” he said.
A shady departure, a new commission,
and a new tribunal
While the portion
of Americans identifying themselves as Catholic has remained relatively stable,
these days only about 27 percent say they are “strong” Catholics, down more than 15 points since
the mid-1980s. Over the past 50 years, the number of US priests has
also declined by about a third, according to the Center for
Applied Research in the Apostolate, a Georgetown University-affiliated
research center. In contrast, the worldwide Catholic population has
remained consistent at about 17 percent.
Early in Pope
Francis’s papacy, there’s hope that the church is ready for meaningful change
to protect children. Still, there’s already evidence that the pope appears
unwilling to publicly confess to the church’s sins.
Consider the case
of Father Carlos Urrutigoity, once one of the four most powerful churchmen in
Paraguay. Urrutigoity had a big problem: He’d been accused of sexually abusing
young men in two different dioceses in the US.
In 2014, following
reports by BishopAccountability.org, GlobalPost traveled to Paraguay to confront
Urrutigoity, who had been promoted to second-in-command of the diocese of
Ciudad del Este in the country's east.
GlobalPost found
Urrutigoity celebrating Mass in the lavish surroundings of a major church
there. He answered questions without hesitation, claiming that the accusations
in his past were all lies. The enigmatic vicar general shrugged off with a
smile the public claim by the bishop of Scranton, Pennsylvania that he posed a
“serious threat to young people.”
One month after
GlobalPost published its investigation on Urrutigoity, the Vatican sent a cardinal and a bishop to
Paraguay on a well-publicized visit. The purpose of the trip was shrouded in secrecy, but
a few weeks later, both Urrutigoity and the bishop of Ciudad del Este who had
sheltered and promoted him were removed from the diocese by the Vatican.
Occurring just a
year after Pope Francis rose to power, the move gave observers hope that the
Vatican was finally getting serious about condemning and stamping out child
abuse across the Catholic Church. South American activists in particular were
hopeful that the Argentine pope was sending a signal by dismissing Urrutigoity,
a fellow Argentine.
But a Vatican
spokesman was quick to tell reporters that these dismissals had more to do with
internal church politics than cleaning up abuse.
Urrutigoity’s
apparent wrongdoing has so far gone unacknowledged by the church, and his
alleged victims continue to suffer without the solace of justice.
There have been
some positive steps, however. Last year, in addition to holding a
well-publicized meeting with victims of abuse by priests, Pope Francis
announced the creation of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of
Minors. And in June the Vatican announced it was setting up a new system of
tribunals to hear cases of bishops accused of protecting or covering up child
abuse by priests.
GlobalPost tried
for weeks to interview Boston’s Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, who chairs
the commission and proposed the new tribunals to the pope. His staff insisted
that our story was outside the cardinal’s, and the commission’s, purview.
Numerous calls and
emails to the Vatican press office went unreturned.
Pope Francis talks with Cardinal Sean Patrick O'Malley as they arrive at
the Vatican on Feb. 13, 2015.
Peter Saunders, a
lay member of the new pontifical commission and an advocate for victims of sexual
abuse by priests, said the priests GlobalPost tracked down are exactly the sort
of cases the Catholic Church, and new commission, need to be focusing on.
“Zero tolerance is
meaningless unless it applies to the whole institution,” he said. “Arguably,
some of the biggest problems are in the less well-off parts of the world, South
America, Africa, the Far East. This is where we know many priests flee to in
order to carry on their abuse, which is an absolute outrage.”
Saunders
acknowledged that the commission’s remit is still a little fuzzy. “We’re all
scratching our heads a bit,” he said. But he also expressed new optimism that a
crisis he’s been sounding the alarm about for decades will be addressed.
“I have to remain
hopeful until my hopes are dashed,” he said. “This is a new future for the
church.”
When the church does nothing: “I
wanted to kill him”
Throughout her
early adulthood, Jennifer had terrible nightmares.
“She just kept
dreaming of this man chasing her and chasing her. She kept spiraling down into
a black hole,” her mother recalled in a recent interview with GlobalPost in San
Antonio, Texas.
The man hunted her
down, into the depths of the hole, until she woke up screaming, Jennifer’s
mother said. Eventually, the mother told her daughter to try to keep the dream
going, and to spin around inside it and confront the man who chased her through
her nights.
Then the daughter
had a startling revelation. The man in the dream was the same man she says
sexually abused her in front of a stained glass window years before.
“She said it was
Father Fred,” the mother said: Federico Fernandez Baeza.
Federico Fernandez Baeza.
In 1987, Fernandez was indicted by a grand jury on two second-degree
felony charges of indecency with a child. The charges stemmed from his alleged
abuse of two boys over two years.
A year later,
Fernandez was negotiating a plea bargain with prosecutors, the family’s
lawyer told local media. He had
offered to plead guilty to the two counts of indecency in exchange for a
10-year suspended sentence and the promise that he would stay away from
children and seek psychiatric help, the attorney told reporters.
But Fernandez and
the Diocese of San Antonio’s lawyers were also negotiating a cash settlement
with the family on the side, for more than $1 million, according to media reports.
Just before the
plea bargain was to be heard in court, the cash settlement was finalized. Its
terms were sealed and remain a secret.
A few days later, a
district judge rejected Fernandez’s plea bargain. She told reporters that she
rejected the deal because she did not believe the defendant should get special
treatment because he was a priest.
But Fernandez never
faced a trial.
After his plea deal
was rejected, the San Antonio prosecutors suddenly dropped their case against
him. The United Press International news agency quoted Bexar County District
Attorney Fred Rodriguez as saying that prosecutors were looking
out for the best interests of the victims, and that their family “had already
been victimized once.” In asking for a dismissal, prosecutors told the judge
that a trial would have been too traumatic for the children, the agency
reported.
Fernandez, so close
to pleading guilty to child sexual abuse, was free.
This judicial snafu
so incensed one Texas state legislator that he introduced a bill that would bar
victims of sexual abuse who receive cash settlements from later refusing to
testify in criminal cases.
"State laws
need to be changed so the guilty offender will not be able to buy off the
victim and go free," state Rep. Jerry Beauchamp told a San Antonio
newspaper in 1989.
But the bizarre
story of Federico Fernandez Baeza wasn’t yet over.
In 2011, Humberto
Leal, a Mexican national on death row in Texas for raping and bludgeoning to
death a 16-year-old girl in 1995 (a crime he denied committing), suddenly told
his attorneys he had been molested as a child by Fernandez.
Leal told a
forensic psychologist that the abuse began with inappropriate touching, and
ended with anal rape when he was in 5th grade. The abuse revelations inspired a
campaign for clemency from others who said Fernandez had abused them as well.
Leal’s legal team
then found several more alleged victims of the priest. One was Jennifer. Months
later, Leal was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas.
In GlobalPost’s
investigation, finding Fernandez wasn’t particularly difficult. We tracked him
down at the Universidad de San Buenaventura in Cartagena, where he holds the
position of secretary, the second-highest administrative rank according to the university’s
website.
After flying to
Cartagena to meet him, GlobalPost discovered that speaking to Fernandez would
be far harder than finding him.
This map shows the paths traveled by the priests we tracked after sex
abuse allegations were made against them in US and European dioceses.
A guard at the
university’s front gate called someone in Fernandez’s office, then informed us
the priest was traveling, and prevented us from entering. During a game of
cat-and-mouse that lasted several days and included hours of staking out the
university entrance, three university officials confirmed that the priest had
indeed been there when we asked to interview him. One of those officials,
University Vice President Jorge Valdez, informed us the priest had not left
town until the second morning.
We also received several anonymous emails and
phone calls from someone identifying themselves as “Limpieza Unidos” (which
translates roughly to “Cleaning Together”) who claimed to be a university
employee. The messages started arriving shortly after GlobalPost emailed
Fernandez’s colleagues at the university.
“I understand that
you’re looking for Father Federico Fernandez and he’s hiding from you,” one
email read. “I can tell you that he’s here at the university.”
After two brief
phone conversations, Limpieza Unidos stopped answering the phone or responding
to emails. Calls to the cellphone number for Fernandez that the source provided
were also not picked up.
Outside the
university gates, students expressed disgust and disbelief that an accused
child abuser was employed as a top administrator at their school.
“Just like in the
United States, that’s a crime here too. Sadly, they haven’t told us any of this,
they’re showing us a different façade,” said 21-year-old microbiology student
Jessie Palomino.
“It just makes you
think, what is the church doing about these cases?” added her friend,
20-year-old Ena Acosta.
Back in San
Antonio, other Catholics were wondering the same thing.
Jennifer’s father
told GlobalPost he remains deeply distressed by the nightmares that haunted his
daughter. He said his family life has long revolved around the local church.
(He asked not to be identified out of concern about backlash from
parishioners.)
A former military
man, he said he thought many times about taking matters into his own hands. He
said he had tried to get postings near Fernandez, so he could slip across the
border into Colombia in pursuit of the priest.
“I was going to
kill him,” Jennifer’s father said. “I think the whole Catholic Church has
failed us, especially around this community. And I’m talking about the orders,
the bishops, the cardinals, everybody involved in the Church. They know they
have a problem, but they continue to let these things happen.”