FORMER Playboy Model Reveals She Was Sexually Abused at Loyola School — but State Law Prevents Lawsuit

By Michael O'Heeffe
New York Daily News
May 26, 2016

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ex-playboy-model-reveals-sexually-abused-loyola-school-article-1.2651633

A personal trainer and former "Playboy" model whose mother was a CIA operative and father was a South American dictator has come forward as the sexual abuse victim who sparked an investigation at an elite Upper East Side Catholic school — but she can't sue because her case is too old for New York's statute of limitations.

Monica Perez Jimenez, 54, has played many roles in her colorful life — stuntwoman, self-defense teacher, fitness model — despite struggling for years with depression and substance abuse as a result of the abuse she suffered as a student at Loyola School. She said the Republican leaders blocking a vote on a bill to reform New York's statute of limitations are putting their own children and grandchildren at risk.

"Loyola is the kind of school you would send your child to — do we have to wait until it happens to one of your children to protect kids from pedophiles?" she said.

Jimenez, the love child of deposed Venezuelan strongman Marcos Perez Jimenez and Marita Lorenz, a CIA operative who also had a torrid affair with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, now lives in Costa Rica, where she is planning to open a gym to teach self-defense to women and children.

"I consider myself a survivor," said Jimenez, whose childhood was anything but ordinary.

Her mother — whose life story as a CIA operative with a taste for dictators just sold to Hollywood as a vehicle for Jennifer Lawrence — enrolled her in Loyola, a Jesuit-run school on the UES that catered to the wealthy.

"My mother thought Catholic school would be a safe place for me to be," said Perez, who got a partial scholarship.

Instead, she claims, she was targeted during her freshman year in 1976 by a one of Loyola's most popular teachers, Louis Tambini.

Loyola School is under sexual abuse investigation for the Louis Tambini cover up. (BUDD WILLIAMS/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

According to Jimenez, the history teacher and basketball coach "rubbed himself to arousal" against her buttocks while having the class look out the windows during a lesson on Greek architecture.

"I thought there was some kind of mistake. I wiggled away and he followed me and continued to rub himself on my body," she said.

Tambini did the same thing about five other times as well, she alleged.

When her grades began to drop, Loyola sent her for after-school tutoring — with Tambini, she claims.

Jimenez was expelled from Loyola after a high-profile incident in October 1977, when New York cops arrested her on gun charges near the Upper East Side apartment she shared with her mother. Jimenez told the cops she had the .22-caliber pistol to protect her mother from Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, Lorenz's CIA handler.

Jimenez, in New York to visit family and friends, said she told Loyola administrators about the abuse before she left the school.

"They said (THEY) would handle it, but they brushed it away," she claimed.

Monica Perez Jimenez, 54, was sexually abused at age 13 while a student at the Loyola School. (JEFFERSON SIEGEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)

Last year, no longer willing to be quiet, Jimenez shared her Tambini experience on the Loyola Facebook page — and the school launched an investigation.

It found that Tambini, who died in 1999, molested seven girls at Loyola in the 1970s and '80s.

But despite evidence that Loyola officials covered up the abuse, the victims can't file lawsuits because New York's statute of limitations expired decades ago.

The statute of limitations in New York, considered one of the strictest in the nation, bars sex abuse survivors from pursuing criminal charges or civil damages after their 23rd birthday.

Jimenez said Tambini — forced to leave Loyola in the 1980s after he was accused of sexual abuse — was able to join a different school.

"He should have been registered as a pedophile. They knew what he did," she said. "We need to have better laws. We need laws that protect children."