Retired Bishop Again Accused of Sex Abuse

By Haidee V Eugenio
Pacific Daily News
April 26, 2017

http://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2017/04/26/retired-bishop-again-accused-sex-abuse/100920502/

Tomas A. Camacho

Former Guam priest and now Saipan Bishop Emeritus Tomas A. Camacho on Wednesday was accused for the second time of sexually abusing a former altar boy, this time by a man identified in a federal court complaint only as B.C.

B.C., represented by attorney David Lujan, said in the complaint he was about 10 years old around 1962 when Camacho sexually abused him numerous times when Camacho was priest at the Nuestra Senora de las Aguas Catholic Church in Mongmong.

B.C.’s complaint brings to 57 the total number of clergy sex abuses cased filed so far in local and federal court.

"One particular occasion, while B.C. was in the rectory eating bread after cleaning around the church, he found porn magazines in the rectory and started to look at them. A few minutes later, Camacho walked in and caught B.C. looking at the porn magazines and threatened to tell B.C.'s mother. B.C. was scared and begged Camacho, 'Please don't do that,'" the complaint says. Camacho again sexually abused B.C., the lawsuit states.

The complaint says B.C., now 65 and living on Guam, never told anyone out of fear that Camacho would tell his parents about the porn magazines.

B.C.'s lawsuit names Camacho and the Archdiocese of Agana as defendants, along with up to 50 unnamed persons who may have helped, concealed or covered up the abuse. The complaint demands $5 million in damages.

Camacho, the bishop of the Diocese of Chalan Kanoa on Saipan from 1984 until his retirement in April 2010 at the age of 76, was accused in February of raping and sexually abusing a former altar boy on Guam from about 1971 to 1974.

Camacho, Saipan’s highest Catholic Church leader for some 25 years, isn't the only bishop in the Marianas who is accused of sexual abuse. Guam’s archbishop for nearly 31 years, Anthony S. Apuron, is accused of raping and sexually abusing former altar boys in Agat in the 1970s. Apuron is undergoing a Vatican canonical penal trial.

Contact: heugenio@guampdn.com