An order from Pope Francis led two women in the country to uncover an alleged pederasty network in Villavicencio with 38 named aggressors.
In 2019, Bishop Óscar Urbina was left in charge, for request of the supreme pontiff, to investigate possible sexual abuse committed by priests. The prelate leaned on Olga Cristancho (68 years old) and Socorro Martínez (59): the first, a seasoned ex-prosecutor and the other, a former official from the Attorney General’s Office with experience in investigating massacres.
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Soon after, the women left Urbina with the suspicion that he was covering up for the priests, and they set out to investigate on their own. “It never crossed my mind” what he would discover, Cristancho confesses to AFP in an interview. Would at least 20 victims.
The scandal grew with the book ‘This is the Lamb of God’ by journalist Juan Pablo Barrientos, who delved into the findings of the two researchers and last year published the testimonies and clues that compromise 38 priests of the Archdiocese of Villavicencio in abusive acts or carnal access.
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The Church discreetly separated 20 of them and two more are in prison. Some are singled out for even induce one of the victims into “prostitution”Father William Prieto confirmed to AFP.
“It will be up to the courts, both civil and canonical, to give a verdict,” adds the spokesman for the Archdiocese. The Prosecutor’s Office, for its part, declined to speak about the processes that affect the Church.
some of the cases
The investigation began by order of Pope Francis.
In Villavicencio, Cristancho keeps a plaster Virgin Mary in the garden of his house. She still feels “shocked” by the abuses she helped expose. As a prosecutor she had unmasked Luis Alfredo Garavitothe largest sexual predator and murderer of minors in the country with about 172 victims.
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Retired, she accepted Bishop Urbina’s invitation. He told me to “comply with very specific and very important guidelines that His Holiness had givenevokes
Along with his partner, he compiled the “evidence” in the style of ‘Spotlight’, the award-winning film that reconstructs the journalistic investigation in the United States on pedophile priests. She remembers with emotion one of the victims who told him how the priests rotated it from the 15 years.
Between them they handled a password, “which was a CD (compact disc)”. One said to another “there I send you that CD, but (in reality) it was like ‘there I send that boy that you can make him an offer (…) and he will surely accept it because of the needs he has’ “, he recounts.
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The two women sent the Vatican the results of their investigations, and are still awaiting a response. Under the same papal directive, the Church in France revealed that some 216,000 minors were victims of priests between 1950 and 2020.
one of the victims
Miguel (not his real name) used to spend his vacations in Villavicencio as a child. He remembers that his family liked him to go to the parish house where his priestly uncle lived. There was the abuser of him, a seminarian who manipulated him to make or receive fellatio.
“He knew how to manage trust with my uncle, trust with my family, so that I would go (…) to the sheets” with him, he tells AFP, hiding his face.
As an adult, while studying law, he understood that his memories were those of abuse. He fell into “shock”. At 26 years old, he abhors aggression. He had, he says, “ultraviolent attitudes” and depressive symptoms. He filed a complaint with the Archdiocese without receiving a response. “I wanted to end my life, I couldn’t find a reason (…) I felt dirty,” he adds. AFP tried unsuccessfully to contact Bishop Urbina by phone and WhatsApp.
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Socorro Martínez, the former prosecutor’s investigative partner, avoid going to the cathedral that he visited every Sunday. “I practically don’t go out anywhere,” she lets out fearfully. One of her children received a call in which they told her that her mother was a “sapa”.
“They [los miembros del arzobispado] they do consider me their enemy, because I revealed that information (…) We were the stone in the shoe, “adds the penalist.
On January 27, Martínez and Cristancho testified before a prosecutor investigating these sexual assaults. So far only one of the victims, abused when she was a 13-year-old altar boyfound justice. A priest and a seminarian pay jail for this case.
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Some priests involved in the plot have unsuccessfully filed seven legal actions to remove Barrientos’ book from circulation. “They admit nothing, deny everything (…) there is no justice, there is no truth, there is no reparation,” laments the journalist who dared to remove the secrets of the Church.
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AFP
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