Chilean School Priest Suspended Amid Sex Abuse Claim

By Tom Murphy
Santiago Times
July 26, 2012

http://www.santiagotimes.cl/national/human-rights-a-law/24080-chilean-school-priest-suspended-amid-sex-abuse-claim

Latest allegation comes after recent series of high-profile abuse scandals.

A Catholic school in Santiago suspended a priest from its faculty Tuesday after claims he sexually abused a student surfaced. Father John O’Reilly, who worked at the Colegio Cumbres in the east of the capital, expressed his total innocence and willingness to fully cooperate with the investigation.

The Catholic Church in Chile has been rocked by a number of allegations of sexual abuse. Photo by Kurotashio/Wikimedia Commons.

“I’ve always had the utmost respect for students and their families, and I am convinced that after the investigation it will be made clear that this is an unfortunate mistake and that my actions have been correct,” O’Reilly said in a statement released Wednesday.

The allegation against O’Reilly comes after a series of high-profile scandals and reports of sexual abuse against minors in the country. Chilean authorities are now investigating 61 schools in the capital amid increasing reports of sex abuse in 2012.

The new investigation follows an announcement from Chile’s National Service for Minors (Sename) who issued a study last month revealing a 21.7 percent increase in registered child sexual abuse cases in the first five months of 2012, compared to the same period last year.

In the face of increasing rates of abuse, President Sebastian Pinera enacted a new law establishing a registry of convicted sex offenders and creating stricter punishments for convicted pedophiles and those caught distributing child pornography.

The most recent headline-grabbing allegation of sexual abuse in the country refers to Father O’Reilly’s alleged victim as a 6-year-old student from the school claiming multiple incidents of abuse between 2010 and 2012.

A report into the allegation was compiled by an investigating team led by Prosecutor Ignacio Pinto, who specializes in sex crimes.

“The school, in consultation with the parents of the child affected, provided a professional evaluation from an external psychologist,” the school’s statement said. “The report from this professional and the background information gathered has been made available to the prosecutor.”

Maria Schilling, the lawyer representing the family of the child, presented her case to Santiago’s Fourth Court on Wednesday. Schilling recounted some details taken from the child’s psychological evaluation.

“As part of his operation, (O’Reilly) removed minors to perform some sort of private spiritual activity with them,” she said. “In this context, from what the child tells us, and according to the testimony I have from one of the school’s teachers, the Father had favorites that he would constantly remove for his spiritual activities.”

So far, only one victim has come forward.

“He denies the existence of any abuse,” O’Reilly’s lawyer, Luis Hermosilla, said. “And we ask prosecutors to investigate it because so far, there is no precedent that justifies and sustains a case of sexual abuse.”

By Tom Murphy murphy@santiagotimes.cl