A Bolivian priest was sent to pretrial detention on suspicion of abusing seminarians ten years ago, a week after the biggest pedophilia scandal in the Andean country was uncovered, committed three decades ago by a deceased Jesuit.
Milton Murillo, a parish priest at the San Roque church in the southern region of Tarija, was sent to a jail in the same department for three months after facing a hearing that lasted until Thursday night, the departmental prosecutor said Friday. Sandra Gutierrez Salazar.
“With this we want to express that the Public Ministry is acting with a strong hand to punish these crimes,” the judicial official told local media.
Last week the notorious case of the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso Pedrajas came to light, which in turn uncovered others that were already being investigated by the Bolivian justice system some time ago, such as that of the priest Murilllo.
Pedrajas died of cancer in 2009. He left an intimate diary in which he confessed to having abused some 85 minors in Bolivia during the 1970s and 1980s in Catholic boarding schools in Bolivia, according to what the Spanish newspaper El País published last week, which accessed the priest’s writings
The Catholic Church and the Society of Jesus apologized and assured that they will support the investigation that derives from the Pedrajas case, although they requested that the case not be politicized, referring to the controversy that the ecclesiastical hierarchy has had for some time with authorities and politicians of the ruling Movement for Socialism (MAS).
The vice president of the Bolivian Episcopal Conference, Ricardo Centellas Guzmán, the day before told radio Fides that they trust the investigations of the Public Ministry and hope that “justice will act as soon as possible.” “Hopefully this is the case and that it ends soon!” He added.
Meanwhile, the government announced this week the creation of a Truth Commission to investigate allegations of child sexual abusesy said that he is promoting a bill so that crimes of this type do not prescribe.
“This horror cannot be repeated, these crimes, whether by priests or any other person, cannot prescribe,” said the Minister of the Presidency, María Nela Prada, the day before.
In the Andean nation, several cases of pedophilia by priests have been reported before, but human rights organizations have said that few have been investigated.
Child Rights International Network, one of the organizations that has worked the most on the issue of clerical pedophilia, said in a 2019 report that only three that ended in conviction were publicly known, including that of a priest who was sentenced for abusing 30 children in a poor rural town in the central region of Cochabamba.
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