Ten former students denounce the Jesuit school where the Pope taught for sexual abuse

Former students of the Colegio del Salvador Gonzalo Elizondo (left) and Pablo Vío, in Buenos AiresENRIQUE GARCIA MEDINA

Colegio El Salvador, with more than 150 years of history, is the most renowned Jesuit school in Argentina.

But the institution is now facing a criminal complaint for the alleged cover-up of the sexual abuse perpetrated by a teacher on dozens of students between 1998 and 2003. His victims, who were then between 10 and 11 years old, accuse the school authorities of having necessary participants in the abuses and criticize the disinterest of the Pope, who was a professor there in the sixties.

Brother César Fretes was the sixth grade tutor, a position that allowed him to call students at any time and receive them alone in a classroom.

He was also a companion in the camps and spiritual retreats organized by the school.

This context led him to find spaces to "abuse at least 42 students from the institution," according to the complaint.

Ten of them have taken the step of appearing in court.

Although Fretes died in 2015, they accuse five former Jesuit authorities of the school as "as necessary participants in the crimes of sexual abuse, corruption of minors and aggravated concealment."

The penalty contemplated for these charges is 15 years in prison.

According to the complainants, the fact that he was responsible for imparting sexual education allowed him to gain the trust of the children and then manipulate them and be able to perpetrate the abuse.

It took almost all of them years to verbalize it and when they did, they believed that it had only happened to them.

Solitude began to break last year when Gonzalo Elizondo and Pablo Vio raised their voices.

After them, other victims began to appear.

To date they have recorded 42, but they believe that the real number could be double.

Nicolás Quinteros I need more than 15 years to process it.

He was aware for the first time when he told his partner, following a talk they had about the controversy in Argentina over the application of comprehensive sexual education (ESI) in schools.

“It was the year 2016, 2017, and the media was talking about ESI.

I told my partner that I was very much in favor of it being implemented well because I had had a very bad experience that should not have happened and would not have happened if it had been implemented well.

I told him that this guy, César Fretes, one day saw me anguished, crying and told me: 'Go wait for me in the bathroom.'

When the professor entered, the two of them were alone.

With excuses, he convinced him to show him his genitals.

"Nico, that was not badly done by ESI, it was abuse, you were a minor," his wife told him,

“I have identified it as abuse for a long time and I give it that name, but until last year I thought it had only happened to me.

Seeing that there were 40 cases, which perhaps are many more, changes everything," says Francisco Segovia.

"We are facing a fact that is of a collective nature, it was not a crazy person who has a perversion, an ill-adjusted behavior, but around him there were people with ecclesiastical and educational functions organized to cover it up and to protect the image of the school, leaving us totally stripped of containment ”, adds Segovia.

Former students of the Colegio El Salvador Nicolás Quinteros, Francisco Segovia and Gonzalo Elizondo.

A week ago, the Justice ordered two raids in the framework of the case: at the school headquarters and at the Loyola Center of the Jesuit Order, in the Buenos Aires town of San Miguel.

The complainants say that among the documentation that was found there are papers that show that both the then rector, Rafael Velasco, and other school authorities knew that Fretes was a pedophile and tolerated him until the complaints multiplied.

They are also accused of not having thoroughly investigated the first accusations against him, which date back to 1998, and of having allowed Fretes to return to the visiting school after his expulsion.

The school expressed its position through a brief statement, as it did last year, when Elizondo and Vio made the abuses public for the first time.

In the text, issued after the raids, it reports that they offered "all their collaboration so that the intervening officers could carry out the procedure so that the facts under investigation can be clarified."

The Society of Jesus, the organization on which the school depends, also highlighted as a sign of collaboration that "spontaneously sent the Court more information than that existing in the educational centers, since it was in the Curial Headquarters where set out to raid."

One of the lawyers in the complaint, Carlos Lombardi, describes the collaboration of the school authorities as "capricious" and "hypocritical" because he considers that they deliver the documentation they want and that they are more interested in safeguarding the image of the institution than in being able to repair the damage. caused.

“Before, the modus operandi was to protect the abuser at any cost.

And when it was untenable, expel it.

Now, the modus operandi is to shield the institution, without giving information to the victims, and limiting itself to apologizing,” says Lombardi.

Fretes died unpunished in 2015, but the complainants are confident that the circle that covered him up will not.

The main obstacle to the progress of the case is the prescription of criminal action.

The law that extended the statute of limitations was approved in 2015 and the crimes that they want to try are previous, but Lombardi cites precedents such as that of the priest Justo Ilarraz -sentenced to 25 years in prison- to believe that they can sit them on the bench of the accused.

"We are going to insist that the convention on the rights of the child be applied, which was already in force in 2003. Justice should make that principle prevail because the passage of time only harms and deepens the pain of the victims," ​​says the lawyer.

The complainants agree with Lombardi.

“They say it was a different time, but there were city laws that forced you to report on this type of case,” Elizondo says.

After a year of searching for answers at school, he claims that he hasn't gotten any.

He also did not respond to the letter that he sent to Pope Francis.

For this reason, his distrust of the real commitment of the Catholic Church against pedophilia is enormous.

“Rafael Velasco was the rector of the school in those years, when these abuses occurred and today he is the highest authority of the Society of Jesus in Argentina, that is, the highest authority of the Jesuits in the country in which we are denouncing.

Another of those we denounced, Andrés Aguerre, was awarded last year with the position of rector of the Catholic University of Córdoba.

It is very shocking, that we say that they made the abuses possible, that they covered them up and that it seems as if it did not matter”, denounces Elizondo.

All his hopes are placed today in Justice.

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