Two Argentine graduates accuse a teacher of sexual harassment at Pope Francis’ school where Jorge Mario Bergoglio teaches. Gonzalo Elizondo and Pablo Vio were 32 years old and 11-year-old students at the Colégio del Salvador, a centuries-old educational institution run by the Catholic sect of Jesuits in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Argentine friends accuse Brother César Destinos of sexually abusing 42 students at the school.
According to the newspaper El País, it took 20 years for Elizondo and Vio to realize that they had the same story. Shipping died in 2015 and was not prosecuted by the courts, but school officials admitted to the abuse.
Former students accuse the school of covering up cases. “A lot of adults didn’t do what they were supposed to do. They neglected us and abandoned us. They knew it was a predator and all they did was move it to another place and cover it up,” Vio said.
Argentine friends claim that Destinos committed the abuse when she was teaching in 6th grade in 2002, but because of the trauma, they didn’t tell anyone and tried to forget what happened. The following year, César Destinos was transferred more than a thousand kilometers away, causing rumors of abuse to rage.
Elizondo said he reconsidered what had happened when he woke up in the middle of the night during a spiritual retreat and felt the defendant’s hand on his pants. “He said I was sleepwalking and he took me back to the room, but I’ve never been a sleepwalker. When I heard the rumors, I knew he was really abusing me.”
As for Vio, it took a little longer to realize what was going on. Since sexuality education, which is no longer a compulsory subject in the school, was no longer a compulsory subject, the students had no idea how to act or respond when Jamishas spoke about sexual matters in class.
According to the victim, he was “slowly preparing us”. “One day in his office he asked me to pull my pants down, he touched my penis, he ran his hands over my body, and he asked me to compare myself to my colleagues in the locker room and then tell him about it. Even then, I thought. I was lucky to have someone to teach me these things. No one told me that was wrong.”
Elizondo recalled that he applied to college staff in 2019 to talk about harassment, and three years later, dozens of victims joined the lawsuit, but all remained without a response and cooperation from the Colégio del Salvador.
The institution defended itself, saying it “has already apologized to the school community and is taking steps to prevent further abuse.”
“Shame”
In 2003, one of the signatures of a letter apologizing on behalf of the professor was signed by current dean Jorge Black and then-dean Rafael Velasco. “First of all, we ask forgiveness again from those who have suffered pain that should not have happened in this school. We are ashamed. We are very sorry. That’s why we openly ask for your forgiveness.”
The transfer letter also said it was necessary to “protect” students. “The school administrators and the Society of Jesus did what they thought best at the time, which was to remove the accused from their posts and protect the students from further harm.”
According to Vio, the first complaint came in 1998, a year after Camisas became a professor. “A family approached the rector, Luis de Maussion, saying that their son was being abused by Destinos. De Maussion rejected the story and decided to keep Destinos in his position.”
The second complaint was made in 2001, when a student told Dean Velasco about Destinos’ attempt to harass him. “The Dean not only denied his testimony, but also publicly called the boy a liar in front of his classmates,” Vio said.
the silent pope
My father, who was a professor there in the 1960s, did not speak in public or with students. Elizondo said he wrote a letter to the Vatican in 2020 asking for the clergy’s help, but received no response. “It protects them. Admitting abuse means ending that protection,” Vio said.
source: Noticias
