Shocking case of sexual abuse in Argentina

Raúl Sidders, the priest accused of sexually abusing a student from a private school in La Plata, when the victim was between 11 and 15 years old, will be tried only in July 2025 by a court in La Plata, as reported this Friday by Iglesias sin Abuses ( ISA).

Specifically, the 61-year-old priest faces charges for the crime of "seriously degrading sexual abuse due to its duration in time and circumstances of its realization, doubly qualified for resulting in serious damage to the mental health of the victim and for being the perpetrator of a religious cult, in a real matter of corruption of minors qualified by the victim being under thirteen years of age".

Unusually for abusers, Sidders portrayed himself as a conservative.

The Criminal Court No. 5 of La Plata set the start of the adversarial hearings for 10 July 2025.

Sidders has been detained since 1 December 2020 for alleged sexual abuse committed against a student at the San Vicente de Paul School, between 2004 and 2008. They were made in mid-2020 by a woman who is now 29 years old.

The story of her in the middle of the pandemic and after a 'prolonged psychological treatment, caused a scandal at the San Vicente de Paul school, in the area of the Hipódromo de La Plata neighborhood. It is a traditional religious educational center in the Buenos Aires capital attended by more than 800 children from the initial levels to secondary school.

When the first stories were published on the networks, the Archbishop of La Plata, Víctor Manuel Fernández, decided to relieve him of his position at the school and transfer him to Misiones. He also ordered her to stay away from contact with minors.

The abusive priest was arrested in December when he was transferred for the investigation. But Justice allowed him house arrest by considering him at risk for heart conditions. He was detained in a La Plata alcaidía for just over a month.

The victim's story: "From the age of 11 to 15, he abused me every week"

Rocío entered the San Vicente de Paul school when she was 5 years old. She did pre-school and continued in elementary school. She liked school, it was going well, until Sidders, a kind of "spiritual advisor" to the institution, set eyes on her when she was 11 years old and in sixth grade.

Her priest took her out of her class to take her to Confession. Or he, too, would look for her during her breaks so that she would accompany him to the confessional. "The director of the school, Maruca (Cabrera, continues to work for the Archbishopric of La Plata) saw all this and did nothing, they were always friends. She knew everything that was happening," says "Rocío", who has multiple pathologies as a result of those abuses

Sidders began abusing her in her chapel. He was touching her and forcing her to touch him. The priest would take her hand as a child and put it in the pocket of her cassock. He, a man of God over 40 years old, did all the movements he wanted and enjoyed himself. She, with her schoolgirl uniform, was holding her breath and wanting to cry.

  "From the age of 11 to 15, he abused me every week. From the sixth to the ninth year. Sometimes it was two or three times a week. Once he wanted me to get into his bed with an altar boy. He told us that he was leaving us to teach fellatio", says Rocío.

At first she thought that she was the only one who suffered these abuses. Later she found out that he abused many of her classmates, males as well. "They called him 'vial', because he forced them to ejaculate in vials that he kept."

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