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	Mexico Bans Lawyers, Activist behind Priest Abuse Suit Associated Press, carried in International Herald Tribune October 12, 2006 http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/10/12/america/LA_GEN_Mexico_Cardinal_Sued.php Mexico City Immigration officials on Thursday handed down a five-year entry ban on two U.S. lawyers and an activist who filed a lawsuit alleging abuse by a Roman Catholic priest, saying they violated the terms of their tourist visas by pressing the case in Mexico. Lawyers Jeffrey Anderson and Michael Finnegan and the national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, David Clohessy, were briefly detained by authorities on Sept. 20 after they appeared at a news conference in the capital with 25-year-old Joaquin Aguilar Mendez, who claims he was abused as a teenager in 1994 by Catholic priest Nicolas Aguilar. The three have filed a civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court alleging that Mexican Cardinal Norberto Rivera and Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony conspired to protect the priest. They left Mexico without further problems, but on Thursday the country's National Immigration Institute said they were all barred for five years. In a statement, the agency said the three Americans had acted as legal advisers, when their tourist entry visas did not give them "the proper authorization to carry out professional or lucrative activities." Anderson called the ban "an attempt by Cardinal Rivera to silence me and those that are speaking with me." Speaking by telephone from the United States, he said, "You don't need any special license in Mexico or in the U.S. to tell the truth." Rivera's office has denied the allegations and characterized the lawsuit as "a publicity stunt with questionable aims rather than a search for true justice for the victims." The priest's whereabouts are unknown, though the plaintiffs have said he is still celebrating Mass in Mexico. He has been charged in California with 19 felony counts of committing lewd acts on a child.
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