By Carolyn Peirce
Examiner
November 1, 2008
http://www.baltimoreexaminer.com/local/crime/Priest_accused_of_sexual_abuse_convinced_woman_she_was_chosen_one_to_have_his_triplets.html
She believed him when he said she was “chosen by God.”
At the age of 50, Dalia Fernandez underwent in vitro fertilization with donor eggs and the sperm of Fernando Cristancho, a Catholic priest in South America, in 2001 in Colombia.
Cristancho “said God had spoken to him and said, ‘Yes, you can have children’ and that I was the right woman. I thought he is a priest and maybe he has that ability, I believed in his ethereal power,” Fernandez said.
“Now I believe I was stupid, but I don’t regret it because my kids are beautiful, and now I’m fighting to protect them.”
Fernandez, now 57, was granted custody of the 6-year-old children, two boys and a girl, after Maryland’s second-highest court held Monday that Cristancho, 52, of Bel Air, is unfit to parent because the state Department of Social Services found he had sexually abused the boys.
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| Frank Dingle, the Baltimore leader of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, stands Friday outside the Baltimore archdiocese headquarters on Cathedral Street in Baltimore City, where he encouraged the Catholic church to hold accountable Fernando Cristancho, a Catholic priest accused of sexually abusing two of his triplets. |
Harford Circuit Judge Emory Plitt Jr., ruled Fernandez deserved the children because she was a de facto parent acting as their mother even though she was biologically unrelated.
Fernandez said Cristancho, who denied ever abusing the boys, later said in court he’d “made a mistake” in choosing her, because she “was not the right woman.”
Fernandez said she barely knew Cristancho, even after having his children, because “he was a very secret man.”
She said they met through Cristancho’s sister, a co-worker of Fernandez, and their relationship was strictly Platonic when they moved in together at Cristancho’s mother’s house.
“We did not have a relationship other than I was the mother of those three children,” Fernandez said.
When her 4-year-old son revealed the sexual abuse in November 2005, Fernandez and Cristancho were in a custody battle in Maryland and no longer communicating, she said.
Fernandez said she told only the child’s doctor who said no one would believe the child’s allegations because of his age and the custody battle.
The doctor recommended a counseling clinic, but Fernandez declined.
“I left it like that,” Fernandez said. “I didn’t confront [Cristancho].”
The abuse resurfaced the following year, when the boy told his baby sitter, she said.
She then told her pastor and they notified the Archdiocese of Baltimore and Bel Air police.
Fernandez said Bel Air police, who did not return calls for comment Friday, told her “there was not enough evidence” to criminally charge Cristancho.
But the Department of Social Services determined that both boys were sexually abused, a finding Plitt upheld and Cristancho chose not to appeal.
Cristancho proceeded only on the custody issue, according to the opinion.
Cristancho could not be reached for comment.
His attorney, Laura Bearsch, cited errors in the investigation and discrepancies in the boys’ allegations.
During the court proceedings, Cristancho was employed at a Wal-Mart store, because church officials at St. Ignatius Church in Forest Hill had learned of the triplets and dismissed him in July 2002, according to the opinion.
That same month, his “faculties to function as a priest in the Archdiocese of Baltimore were revoked,” said archdiocesan spokesman Sean Caine.
Caine could not confirm whether the Diocese of Istmina in Colombia is planning to defrock Cristancho.
“Only the Vatican can defrock. ... He was not our priest, but a priest allowed to serve here until his faculties were revoked in 2002 because he refused to accept an assignment — before the archdiocese learned that he had fathered three children and long before any allegations of abuse were known,” Caine said.
Defrocking is rare and the process usually takes several years, said David Clohessy, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
“The overwhelming majority of sexual predators, even many who are convicted in jail, are not defrocked, and they’re kept on payroll,” he said.
“The majority of them are suspended, but it’s frankly less than 10 percent who are defrocked.”
The case prompted a small protest Friday outside the Baltimore archdiocese headquarters on Cathedral Street in Baltimore City where SNAP members asked the Catholic Church to stop making excuses and protect its children by outing abusive clergy.
SNAP members said they’re also planning to re-introduce legislation that would allow victims to file civil lawsuits without a statute of limitations. That bill, which has been introduced five times, has been vehemently opposed by the Catholic church.
Cristancho also was accused in 1997 of sexual misconduct with a young woman who wasn’t a minor, for which he was fired from the Parish Council at Good Shepherd Church in Alexandria, Va., according to the opinion.
Contact: cpeirce@baltimoreexaminer.com
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