New Allegations Of Sexual Abuse Against Priests In Mexico

2024 Author: Steven Freeman | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 08:15

New allegations of sexual abuse against priests emerge, according to Associated Press reports. Biani López-Antúnez is one of several women who has reported being a victim of sexual abuse when she was a child in a religious school. In the case of Biani, it happened when she was between 8 and 10 years old and attended the Cumbres school in Cancun in the 90s, led by the Legionaries of Christ.

Beatriz Sánchez, who was an English teacher at Cumbres School in the 90s, noticed that something was wrong because of the anguish she perceived in one of her students. "When I got closer he said to me: miss, each time the father is making it stronger for the little ones and we don't want that to happen to them anymore, please help us," says the teacher, now 63 years old. The teacher asked her students to write a letter telling her and another teacher everything. Biani López-Antúnez was one of those girls who wrote that letter recounting the abuse of the priest Fernando Martínez.

"The father began to trust us and thought that we were very stupid and that he could do what he wanted with us," says the letter from the 10-year-old girl, which tells that the priest kissed the girls and carried them between his legs. "When it came to the mouth, we were seriously concerned," he adds in his testimony, written in 1993. "I suffered abuse from 8 to 10 years old. There were gradual, ongoing abuses and not only did he abuse me, but I was also forced to witness the abuse of other girls,”López-Antúnez said at a press conference in November.

Biani's mother, Irma Hassey, called the legionary superior when her daughter told her what was going on. The superior asked for forgiveness and begged him to remain silent, assuring him that he would remove the priest from the school in Cancun. "I was leaving my daughter at the door of a rapist," laments the mother, who regrets having kept silent until now.

Another victim of Father Martínez was television presenter Ana Lucía de Salazar, who revealed in May the abuses she had suffered at the same school in Cancún. She also claimed that the leaders of the Legion of Christ had done everything to hide the attacks and protect the reputation of their private schools. "While some read the Bible, they raped those in front, girls from 6 years to 8-9 years" remembers Salazar. "Afterwards, nothing was the same, nothing returned to its place." The founder of the Legionaries of Christ order, Marcial Maciel, who died in 2008, was also accused of sexual abuse of minors. His case reached the Vatican's ears and in 2006 Pope Benedict XVI forced him to withdraw from the ministry.