The Superior Court of Justice of Madrid (TSJM) has confirmed the sentence of ten years in prison imposed on a priest for abusing two minor monaguillos in his parish in the town of Torrejón de Ardoz. The judges agree to replace the crime of sexual aggression with another of abuse, but they keep intact the criminal sanction against the religious in understanding that the declaration of their two victims is credible and not “an orchestrated maneuver” to harm him, as he intended to make his defense believe the magistrates. The priest, expelled from the priesthood more than a year ago, can still go to the Supreme Court.
The priest, as eldiario.es revealed, arrived in 2012 at the Torrejonera parish of Santiago Apostle and that same year the abuses against one of the altar boys began. The religious took advantage of the moments that passed alone with them in the sacristy to perpetrate their abuses, with touching or trying to kiss them. It all started when one was 12 years old and the other 14, and extended even during a trip from the congregation to Jerusalem.
The events did not reach the ears of the then bishop Juan Antonio Reig Plá until years later, when the boys were no longer in the parish, they told each other what had happened and decided to denounce: the two, who did not know each other, had happened the same and decided to go to the ecclesiastical authorities. Their parents knew anything until one day several letters from the Ecclesiastical Court of La Rota arrived at their homes calling them to declare in a canonical criminal process that, over the years, ended with their expulsion from the priesthood. Plá then brought the accusations to the Prosecutor’s Office, which complained against the religious in 2022.
The accused priest has always denied the facts and has supported two fundamental arguments: that the boys try to avenge him for having been very rigid with them during his childhood and also that the courts have not allowed him to defend themselves properly because they had not appeared alleged witnesses who were going to declare in their favor, although they were never correctly identified by the pedophile. Also that forensic have never examined their allegations of being physically unable to abuse two minors, although alleging ailments after the facts.
In a sentence that this newspaper has been able to examine, the TSJM has decided to confirm the sentence of ten years in prison that the Provincial Court imposed in the first instance, also ratifying the rest of the sanctions outside the prison: the prohibition of contacting their victims or approaching them for seven years, of working with minors for two decades and finally compensating with 2,000 euros to each of the two monagues Sexually taking advantage of his position in the parish and intimacy he provided.
There was no “orchestrated maneuver” by the altar
The magistrates only accept to change the crimes of sexual aggression for which they had been convicted, although they keep their conviction intact. In addition, they consider that there are sufficient evidence to condemn him, especially the statements of the two monagos. And the judges establish that the priest has not been able to demonstrate “that everything is the result of a maneuver orchestrated by both young people”, without being sufficient for their defense to “introduce their own hypothesis to consider that the facts have not taken place.”
The sentences of the case reveal that the strategy of the convicted religious has always been to question the two victims and blame their joint complaint before the Church to have been very strict with them. In his last resort, his version pivoted around defending that they had denounced him because he had threatened to “inform other priests” that one of the boys had had problems with drugs. Nor did he consider credible that nobody found out that he spent seven years abusing the altar boys.
The TSJM confirms what the Provincial Court already said: there is no proof of what it says. The young people, far from urging a strategy to harm the pastor, did not even tell their parents, who only knew the complaint when the letters of the ecclesiastical court that investigated the priest arrived. The judges also explain that it is common for sexual crimes to only be witnessed by their victims: “The events happened when the sacristy was closed.”
If it took several years to denounce the facts before the bishopric, recalls the TSJM in his still appealed sentence, it is because the young people were at that time “initiating their age of sexual development” and one of them even “thought it was something normal and that it would be a form of the accused of removing her nerves before going out to celebrate the Eucharist and acting as a sinus in front of the parishioners.”
The courts, with the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme to the head, have been explaining that the delay in denouncing a sexual crime does not negatively affect the credibility of the victims. The Constitutional Court itself has established that the delay of a victim in submitting a complaint for this type of fact cannot be used by the judges for the benefit of the aggressor.
The victims, recalls the Madrid Territorial Court, “have maintained their version of the facts” in front of the exculpatory version without evidence of the accused. “It does not attend the victims of any spurious spirit and that is, we must not forget that the young people did not comment until the year 2020 for the existing friendship and trust” between the pedophile and the family of one of the victims. In the trial held at the Provincial Court, the parents of one of the young people showed the pain that meant that a person of their maximum confidence, who had even taken care of during a hospitalization, would have abused their son.
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