EL PAÍS launched an investigation into pedophilia in the Church in 2018 and has a database updated with all known cases. If you know of any case that has not seen the light, you can write to us at: abuse.is. If it is a case in Latin America, the address is: [email protected].
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Since he was abused, Fredo Killing found the idea of attending school unbearable. He started skipping classes and then was gone forever. When he was in his fifth year of high school, the Spanish priest Jesús Andrés Vela began the siege. He first flattered him with gifts and then ordered him in pieces of paper to leave class and appear in his room. If he were alive, Jesús Andrés Vela would be tried as ordered by law, but he died in 2017. 55 years ago the priest sporadically visited Santiago de Chile and took the opportunity to abuse minors. The Society of Jesus has just verified five cases of priest rape.
Fredo had tried to escape from his memories, but with each step on the ground they reappeared. He studied at San Ignacio Alonso Ovalle, a Jesuit school in Santiago; He was between 15 and 16 years old. One day, in the middle of class, the priest Jesús Andrés Vela sent a message to Fredo. He wanted him to go to his room to supposedly give him spiritual guidance. He had earned his trust: every time the priest returned from Colombia he took him souvenirs and he invited him so that both of them, in the company of other young people, could attend spiritual retreats on nearby farms. On one occasion, the priest asked him to look at some engravings placed on the desk. While standing, the priest came so close to him from behind that Fredo felt very uncomfortable and got out of there as soon as he could. He went to the room for the second time and, although he does not remember the priest's words, the abuse he suffered knows no forgetfulness: Jesús Andrés Vela left a book on the desk and asked Fredo to look through it. She stood behind him, leaving him no chance to get away, and began to rub against Fredo's body.
—I felt that the guy had an erection, it was obvious. At one point, he pressed me harder against the desk and had an orgasm. “I was shocked,” she remembers.
He left and never returned to the room of that man, whom he considered “a good person” until the day of the abuse. He was confused, his performance at school began to decline, he lied to avoid going to class and, in the middle of the school year, he decided to withdraw permanently so as not to return to that or any other school. He only had one year left to finish high school. His parents hired him private tutors to complete his studies and he attended free exams. However, he did not reveal his hidden reasons to anyone. He spoke about it for the first time with his brother after a long time.
—One feels ashamed. One says: “How could this happen?” “I felt violated, my trust in him was violated,” she says by phone from Colorado, United States, where he currently lives.
Fredo is 71 years old today and he is not the only victim. The first complainant made his case known to EL PAÍS last June. In identical circumstances, the same priest Jesús Andrés Vela abused Felipe Cáceres Pizarro. No one had publicly even hinted at suspicion against the clergyman who died at the age of 93 in Colombia, where he was director of the Ignatian Youth House in Bogotá and professor of Theology at the Javeriana University. Guru in pastoral and missionary topics of the church, he had published eight books. He was born in 1924 in Salamanca and settled in Colombia, although he had previously studied in Brazil. When he visited Chile, he gave workshops to parents, students and other priests.
Felipe Cáceres had reported his abuse in 2019 to the Chilean Jesuits, but years passed and his case remained shelved. In 2022 he traveled to Colombia to speak with the provincial of the Jesuits and that was when he found out that Jesús Andrés Vela had already died.
The investigation by the Company of Jesus in Chile began on July 26, a month after EL PAÍS' complaint. It was entrusted to Waldo Bown, a criminal lawyer hired by the Chilean Jesuits. Bown received statements from six male complainants, but determined the plausibility of sexual abuse in five cases. One of them, according to the statement issued by the Jesuits, “could not be corroborated due to not having sufficient background information.” The findings of the investigation confirm the accusations of rape that occurred between 1965 and 1969 reported by this newspaper last June with the case of Felipe Cáceres.
Bown had investigated the priest Renato Poblete, who also died, and found him guilty of abusing 22 women, including four minors. The priest Poblete was quite a celebrity in Chile: there was a statue of him in a river park that was named after him and, in 2009, he was decorated by President Michelle Bachelet with the Bicentennial Prize. Following the complaints, the Government of Chile withdrew the award, the bronze statue, the plaques and the name of the park. The lay lawyer also investigated and found priest Jaime Guzmán Astaburuaga, who was expelled from the congregation, responsible for sexual abuse.
The result of the investigation into the case of Jesús Andrés Vela was sent to the Province of Colombia, where it should also be investigated. “The occurrence of events like these causes us deep pain, even more so when they have occurred within our institutions. We express our regret and condemn any type of abuse,” reads the statement from the Chilean Jesuits.
So far, the Society of Jesus of Chile has not paid the victims any compensation, it has only offered them free “psychological therapies” for a period of two years. For Cáceres it is satisfactory that they have found more cases. “I had a suspicion that I wasn't the only one, but there were more than I thought,” says Felipe, who emphasizes that there are other victims who did not want to testify.
When the events occurred, the victims were between 13 and 15 years old. Today, they are men between 68 and 72. Fredo Killing says that he will never forget that bitter moment until the day he dies. “For me, the important thing is that the truth be known, that this priest does not appear as an eminence, as a saint, because he is not one. “He is a pedophile,” he says.
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