EL PASO (TX)
El Paso Times
January 31, 2019
In November 2018, the Diocese of Las Cruces released the names of 28 priests identified as credibly accused of sex abuse. It included at least six priests with ties to the El Paso Diocese. The Las Cruces Diocese was created from the El Paso Diocese in 1982.
Previously identified accused priests
Santiago Almaguer
Allegations of abuse were reported to the Las Cruces Diocese in 2012, and the incidents are alleged to have occurred between 1975 and 1978. Almaguer was assigned to St. Anthony Seminary in El Paso in 1975. Almaguer officiated several funeral Masses in the early 1980s, according to El Paso Times archives.
Rosario Lopez
In 2010, a man identified as “John Doe” accused the Rev. Rosario Lopez and another priest, Manuel Perez Maramba, of sexual misconduct. He sued both the Las Cruces and El Paso dioceses. The case was settled in 2011. The alleged abuse occurred in 1974, while he was assigned to St. Genevieve in Las Cruces, and Lopez officiated at several funeral Masses in El Paso in 1975, according to El Paso Times archives.
Manuel Perez Maramba
The same man, identified as “John Doe,” named Maramba in his suit against the Las Cruces and El Paso dioceses, but that was not the first allegation against Maramba. The church has settled at least three cases involving Maramba. The Las Cruces Diocese says allegations against Maramba were reported from 2004 to 2012. The sexual misconduct by Maramba is alleged to have occurred between 1976 and 1977. He was assigned to the Diocese of Las Cruces in 1976, to the St. Francis Newman Center in Silver City, New Mexico, in 1976 and 1977; and at St. Genevieve in 1977.
According to a 2007 article in the El Paso Times, a former altar boy said Maramba sexually assaulted him during sleepovers with other altar boys at Maramba’s residence on church property and during trips, including one to Disneyland in California. Maramba, a Benedictine, is believed to have returned to the Philippines in the 1970s. He is believed to still be alive.
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