Saul Barrales does not hide his anger. Has fulfilled 88 years, 12 of them dipped in a legal struggle in vain to get justice as a victim of abuse of Marcial Maciel, the priest founder of the Legionaries of Christ, one of the great movements of roman christianity. For him it is a mockery of the internal report made public over the weekend, in which the congregation supports that since 1941 until today, 175 children were victims of sexual abuse committed by 33 of its priests, at least 60 of them, by Maciel. “It’s a washed face,” he says. “It is not enough,” he continues, “the institution must disappear.” Fed up with not being cared for or by the Church or by the justice, Rods and seven other people who were abused by Maciel when they were children —most are now over 80 years old— will gather in January to the mexican authorities to seek redress for abuses suffered.
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An internal investigation of the Legionaries of Christ recognizes 60 abuse of children of its founder, The Legionaries of Christ admitted six sexual abuse in Mexico “The trauma is that abuse it and say that it is not bad, God is watching”
Barrales recalled that her nightmare began when she was 13 years old. In 1946 he and about 30 other guys -15 of them between 11 and 13 years— traveled with Maciel to Spain, with a stay of a few days in Cuba. After you embark towards Europe, the priest called it a night in your stateroom. “I said, ‘give me your hand here in my chest because I am in pain’ and then down towards your intimate parts. Soon I began to notice her advances. I saw who was well liked. He felt sympathy for the people güera [white skin], blue eye, kids of 10, 11 and 12 years.” Rods that ensures that the Vatican knew of Maciel’s abuse, but that there was a strong silence between the young men training for the priesthood and the authorities of the Church at all levels. “I said: ‘you can Not be prosecuted to a being that has done so many good things. What we considered a saint, a messenger of God to transform the Church.”
he Kept silent for 12 years, but as he was doing adult began to make criticisms on what I could see, without getting to the indictments. It was when Maciel was decided to expel him. It was 1958, Barrales was 25 years old, and “life ruined”, he had to start from scratch. Is dedicated to give classes and lived with a humble salary of a teacher, always with bitterness, until he retired.
Rods and the other seven abuse victims of Maciel will go to the Executive Commission of Attention to Victims (CEAV), the Government of Mexico with the hope of ruling on their cases and set up a repair. Mexico approved in 2012 a General Law of Victims, which obliges the State to provide assistance and protection, and to indemnify those who have suffered violations of their human rights or have suffered violence. “Are these federal authorities which can determine the degrees of involvement and to achieve a repair on the part of the Government”, explains Sergio Mendez, lawyer for the eight victims and coordinator of the Litigation of Constitutional Justice Pro People BC Méndez says that the State may require that you ask for a public apology and pay compensation to the victims.
The report of the Legionaries comes in the midst of the outbreak of the case of Fernando Martinez in Mexico, a legionnaire that he abused at least six girls and that the congregation covered up for 50 years. The radio presenter Ana Lucia Salazar was the first to denounce the abuses suffered when I was eight years old in a school in Cancun at the hands of Martinez, who was the director. “You use it, lie to you and then you discarded, and you quash” he said, ” at that time. Now argues that the internal investigation is not valid because “no one oversaw” and presented a figure “far-fetched and concise,” he says. “I find it very make up the result, they are not even counting all those who covered up. I figured, at least, that is the double”.
Other victims
After the denunciation of Salazar in may, jumped to light the case of seven other victims who were abused by Martinez. Among them, María Belén Márquez, 34 years old, that detailed what happened in the Institute Summits between 1991 and 1993, one of the 154 schools that the Legionaries run in the world. “It was not a weakness, it was sexual abuse, and on several occasions,” he says. Can’t erase the memory the hands of the priest over his body. “Are sequels that are not seen, but that last a lifetime”.
Belen Marquez and Biani Lopez, the victims of the legionnaires ‘ Fernando Martinez. Gladys Serrano
To Biani López Antúnez, one of the other victims of Martinez, her parents signed up when I was eight years old in the school which was led by the priest, to whom the congregation had placed at the head of the institution despite accumulating at least three allegations of pedophilia. “¡Puta madre! They knew perfectly well that they were putting a sexual predator in my school”, he curses the woman of 36 years. “In addition to abuse us, made us see the abuses of other girls,” she says.
The publication in November of the internal investigation that supported the efforts to hide sexual abuse at the college of the order in Cancun has created a tense situation between a part of the mexican Church with the Legion. The refusal of the congregation, until the time, to expel the Spanish Eloy Bedia, one of the accused to silence the allegations against Martinez and newly promoted, it opens up more doubts than certainties about the process of internal cleansing.
To Saul Barrales, despite the past decades and the death of Maciel, is not late for the Church to recognize what happened and provide compensation to the victims. That is the battle that has waged for the past 12 years. “We want to be recognized. We want the Church to make the effort to remove priests who have inclinations to abuse, we want that, if you know that you have disrupted someone’s life, as to me, there is an economic return to be able to live. The Vatican knew all these things, it is the top that does not want to recognize it!”.
“Complicity of the State”
The former priest Alberto Athie, one of the first to denounce the sexual abuse of Maciel, the responsibility of the mexican State of impunity that has protected perpetrators within the Legionaries of Christ. And he gives as an example of this is the refusal of the justice mexican of to carry out the investigations demanded by the victims, who suffered the child abuse of religious. “The judicial authorities are unaware of the cases or have sought to neutralize them. There is a complicity civil and of the State”, he denounces. Athie ensures that the report submitted by the Legionaries of Christ is incomplete. The lack most important thing is that it does not give names of priests acuinvolved of pedophilia, nor inform you of their current location or details if they have been handed over to the authorities. Another complaint is that the report “leaves out” the way “were undercover all the time.” The mexican Church also criticized the report. Rogelio Cabrera Lopez, president of the Mexican episcopal Conference (CEM), said during the weekend that the report is incomplete and that “arrives late”. For the archbishop “it is inexplicable that this story criminal has not been released in more than 70 years.”
