CALIFORNIA
Daily Breeze
By Tracy Manzer and Dana Bartholomew, Staff Writers
sgvtribune.com
Posted: 01/26/2013
The case files of Father Santiago Tamayo and Father Angel Cruces read like lurid dime-store novels.
Appropriately enough, the tales of how Tamayo, Cruces and five other priests sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl were fodder for the tabloids in the 1980s, which dubbed it “Snow White and the Seven Priests.”
The tale went public when victim Rita Milla came forward after becoming pregnant at age 19. Milla, a parishioner at St. Philomena church in Carson, told church officials in 1983 she was pressured by Tamayo to have an abortion, and she eventually went to the Philippines to have her daughter.
One of the documents in the newly released files includes a denial by Tamayo that he encouraged an abortion.
Also included is a letter the teen gave to church officials in 1983 but never sent to the priest who she believed fathered the child, Father Valentine Tugade. Tugade’s paternity was finally proven by a DNA test in 2003, but in 2007 Milla’s attorney, Gloria Allred, told reporters they did not know if he was still alive. | Related: Exhibit 50, Page 3
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