Pope Francis ignores two sexual abuse victims at college where he was a teacher
Sexual abuse at Colegio del Salvador: "The modus operandi was always the same".
Between 2001 and 2002, Gonzalo Elizondo and Pablo Vio were among the many victims of abuse by César Fretes, then tutor and in charge of sex education at the Jesuit congregation's school. The facts, the pain and the institutional cover-up: "Silence was promoted, yesterday and today".
This week more than a thousand former students, students and relatives signed a letter asking for explanations from the authorities of the Society of Jesus and the Colegio del Salvador - in the city of Buenos Aires - for the sexual abuse committed by the Jesuit brother (the article is wrong in calling him a priest) and teacher César Fretes, against almost thirty students 20 years ago.
Although the institution admitted the crimes and made a sort of apology, it refused to make any kind of reparation: "The authorities of the school and the Society of Jesus in those years acted in the belief that they were doing the best they could".
From 1996 to 2003, Fretes served as a teacher and tutor for all the sixth grades at the school. "He was the person we would go and talk to, or he would even take you out of class to chat," says Gonzalo Elizondo, one of his victims. "I was 11 years old and during a spiritual retreat he came into my room while I was sleeping, I woke up and he was touching me; I didn't understand what had happened until years later when other classmates told me that they had gone through the same thing".
The modus operandi was always the same: he took you to tutoring -sometimes it was outside school, at camps-, oriented the conversation towards sexual questions, manipulated you with inappropriate questions and asked you to drop your trousers", says Pablo Vio, another of the complainants, a friend and classmate of Gonzalo's. "I didn't understand what had happened until years later other classmates told me they had gone through the same thing".
One element that paints the perversion of the system in its entirety is that Fretes himself was in charge of giving sex education to the children: "He manipulated us into believing that what he was doing with us was normal or correct".
Following complaints from parents, Fretes was sent to Mendoza in 2003. The priest settled in the same block as another school of the congregation until he was expelled from the order in 2007. He died in 2015. "They covered it up so that people wouldn't talk about it, what was promoted was silence", accuses Gonzalo.
According El Pais, the Spanish daily, when he heard the Pope's speeches against paedophilia within the Church, Elizondo thought he could take up their case. He wrote a letter in 2020 to which a reply was never received.
"He is protecting them. Acknowledging the abuses would be letting go of their hand," says Vio.
"The Church's aim is that we get tired, that we run out of energy and give it up, so that they can continue to cover it up, as if nothing had happened. If the Pope were to come out and speak, no one would be able to continue being distracted and it would give us a recharge of energy, it's not going to happen"
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