By Gio Benitez
CBS 4
September 18, 2009
http://cbs4.com/local/Miami.Former.Stripper.2.1193918.html
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| Father David Dueppen and Beatrice Hernandez |
A woman who says she is a former Miami stripper has filed a petition for a restraining order against a South Florida priest, who she claims fathered her baby.
The woman, Beatrice Hernandez, told CBS4 News that she was a dancer at a Miami strip club, Porky's. She said she met Father David Dueppen at that strip club and started a relationship shortly thereafter.
Early this year, Hernandez had a baby and demanded Dueppen take DNA paternity tests, according to court documents obtained by CBS4 News. But, in the restraining order petition, Hernandez said that after several attempts for a DNA test, "the [priest's] rage escalated as he attacked [Hernandez], grabbing her by the throat and choking her."
"I'm afraid. I'm on the street. I'm running from people," Hernandez told CBS4's Jim DeFede over the phone. "David said to me that if I go to the media, he would make me disappear and take my baby."
Dueppen last served as an associate priest at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Pembroke Pines. He has been on administrative leave for one month, according to Miami Archdiocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta.
"It was a leave he requested. He is not assigned a parish right now," Agosta told CBS4 News. She said Dueppen asked for the leave "for personal reasons."
Agosta also confirmed that Dueppen was once the pastor at the same church in Miami Beach recently led by Father Alberto Cutie, the popular television personality who paparazzi cameras caught in an embrace with a woman on the beach.
Dueppen has also been in the news before. In 2006, The Miami Herald printed an article stating that a woman said she was abused in 2005 by Dueppen. It's unclear whether that woman is Hernandez, but the Archdiocese did confirm that a financial payment was made to Beatrice Hernandez in 2006.
"It was not hush money. There was a relationship that was an inappropriate relationship between Ms. Hernandez and Father Dueppen," said Agosta.
Asked if it was a sexual relationship, Agosta said: it was "a breach of a fiduciary relationship."
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