Bolivia charges two high-ranking Jesuit officials for covering up the case of the pedophile priest's diary

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The Departmental Prosecutor's Office of Cochabamba (Bolivia) has formally charged the former superiors of the Society of Jesus Marcos Recolons and Ramón Alaix, both Spanish, with covering up for decades the Valencian Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas, who died in 2009, who admitted in a secret diary to having sexually abused dozens of children in several Bolivian centers of the order, thanks to the protection of his superiors, between 1972 and the beginning of the 2000s. Both Recolons (now 81 years old) and Alaix (83) are cited by Pedrajas as two of the seven senior officials of the order in Bolivia who helped him avoid the complaints of his victims.

“They had the obligation to control the operation of each of the Jesuit works, even more so in the one where they had under their care and protection children and adolescents in an evident state of vulnerability,” appears in the charging document from the Bolivian Public Ministry to which has had access to that newspaper.

Recolons and Alaix must appear this Thursday the 28th in the Cochabamba courts for an in-person hearing.

The Public Prosecutor's Office has requested precautionary measures against the defendants due to “risk of flight”, “actual danger to the victims” and possible “judicial obstruction”.

While in Spain only judges have the power to charge one or more people with a crime, the Bolivian prosecutor's office can do so as long as there is sufficient evidence about the existence of the fact and the participation of the accused, and must issue a duly substantiated request. OK".

The news of the accusation comes almost a year after EL PAÍS published an investigative report on Pedrajas's personal diary, which he baptized

Historia

and kept so that none of the Jesuits would find it

.

In more than 300 pages of it, this Jesuit confessed that, for decades, as a missionary in Bolivia, he abused at least 85 minors while he was a teacher at the Juan XXIII boarding school in Cochabamba.

“I hurt too many,” is one of his notes.

The document also states that at least seven of his superiors, especially Alaix and Recolons, and another dozen clerics in Bolivia and Spain knew of his crimes and protected him.

No one reported him to the authorities or prevented him from continuing in contact with minors.

In this newspaper's report, several victims of Pedrajas also appeared who crudely recounted the attacks they suffered and how the Society of Jesus looked the other way when they reported what happened.

The publication of the report

caused a media earthquake.

The Prosecutor's Office opened an investigation ex officio, and both the Ministry of Education and the Attorney General of Bolivia, Wilfredo Chávez, appeared before the courts as accusations.

The Society of Jesus made a move: it also denounced the case and removed eight of its former senior officials—including Recolons and Alaix.

All this encouraged new victims to tell their case, many of them pointing out other clerics of pedophilia.

In total, this newspaper reported up to a dozen priests accused of abuse of minors in Bolivian centers.

Seven were Spanish.

Among them, the archbishop of La Paz Alejandro Mestre and other Jesuit companions of Pedrajas who appear cited in his diary, such as Lucho Roma or Luis Tó.

The latter, transferred in 1992 by the Society of Jesus from Spain to Bolivia after being convicted in Barcelona for abusing an eight-year-old minor.

Traumatic experiences

Pedrajas' diary has become the cornerstone of the investigations of the Bolivian Prosecutor's Office, whose "authenticity is supported by the testimonies of victims and the investigative work carried out in Spain," according to the indictment document.

At least 15 victims have gone to civil authorities to include the abuses they suffered in this case.

The Bolivian Public Ministry considers that all of them still feel “fear, helplessness and emotional affectation” and that, for this reason, the majority have requested to be part of the witness protection programs.

“Father Alfonso Pedrajas has touched me everything.

I think he even put his finger in my anus.

“It has been one of the most traumatic experiences I have had in my life,” appears in one of the statements.

Many of these complaints are supported by psychological reports written by specialists from the Victim and Witness Protection Unit of the Prosecutor's Office (UPVT).

In fact, one of their general conclusions about these statements is that, “despite the time that has passed since the commission of the acts of sexual assault, they present emotional instability, affecting daily activities, presenting mental exhaustion, feelings of loneliness, guilt, remorse. , somatic and sexual concern.”

The Prosecutor's Office also highlights the impunity with which Pedrajas attacked minors, which was “an open secret” in several centers of the order.

“It has been shown that some victims of the attacks suffered by Alfonso Pedrajas managed to communicate to the provincials about the conduct displayed by Alfonso Pedrajas, who, however, had the obligation to investigate the matter, since they were minor victims. of age, they did not adopt any type of protective action,” he points out.

In his diary, Pedrajas describes this cover-up by Alaix and Recolons on several occasions.

In February 2008, he writes: “We canceled another tribute meeting that was planned in La Paz at the last minute.

Someone had insisted on the old complaint to Ramón [Alaix, then provincial of the order].

Ramon was scared.

He even talked about sending me to Spain.

I stopped him as best I could and until now he has not told me anything about what he promised: to talk to the person concerned again and ask for forgiveness.

Regarding this, the Prosecutor's Office concludes: "It is evident that Ramón Alaix had full knowledge of the acts carried out by Alfonso Pedrajas."

But accusations of cover-up are also in the complaints of several victims.

This is the case of the former Jesuit Pedro Lima, who in 2002 went to Alaix to denounce the abuses of Pedrajas and three other priests—Luis Tó, Antonio Gausset and Carlos Villamil—.

In response, Alaix expelled him from the order, although with the guarantee that the Jesuits would continue to pay for his training so that he could be ordained a priest.

But Lima continued to denounce the inaction of the Jesuits and, he says, Marcos Recolons called him a year later to announce that the Jesuits would stop financing his studies.

“He told me: 'I'm not going to allow you to speak [badly] about my brothers,'” he says.

Unlike Alaix, Recolons' ecclesiastical career took off in the early 2000s. In 2004, the superior general of the Jesuits in Rome, Adolfo Nicolás Pachón, appointed him regional assistant for Latin America and elevated him to counselor in 2008, a position which placed him at the top of the congregation's power worldwide.

It was in those years when Pedrajas paid a visit to the Vatican.

He describes it this way in his diary.

“A week in Rome.

The most valuable thing: the friendship of Marcos Recolons.”

According to the pedophile's memoirs, it is during the last years of his life that the most complaints from victims reach the leadership of the Jesuits in Bolivia.

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