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Natalia in the community of Santa Gertrudes de Envigado in Colombia, where she returned with the intention of making her complaint public
5 hours before
On August 25, 2022, one of the biggest scandals surrounding the sexual abuse of minors in the Catholic Church broke out in Medellín, the second largest city in Colombia.
On that day, the city’s archbishop, Bishop Ricardo Tobón Restrepo, published on social media a list with the names of 36 priests who had been denounced before the archdiocese over the past 30 years.
The release came after the country’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of Colombian journalist Juan Pablo Barrientos and ordered the Catholic Church to hand over the data, which they considered to be of public interest.
Barrientos spent years investigating allegations of pedophilia in the Colombian Catholic Church.
The list released by the Archdiocese includes the name of a priest accused by Natalia Restrepo.
What follows is the woman’s firsthand testimony, accompanied by the context of her case, collected by BBC Mundo.
My name is Natalia, I’m 32 years old and I’ve just started the most important journey of my life.
I returned to Medellín with my daughter, two suitcases and a firm intention to break my silence. To denounce once again and in every possible way the priest who raped me and forced me to have an abortion in 2004 when I was 14 years old.
This is a journey into my past, into the most painful story I have ever experienced, which not even my family knows in detail.
1. My grandmother’s house
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Natalia’s grandmother still lives in the neighborhood where she grew up
Although I’ve often returned to the home I grew up in, this is different.
It’s the first time I go back and try to talk to my grandmother about what happened to me. He is already 90 years old and although he has lost his eyesight his character is still strong.
My grandmother was my mother and father because she couldn’t or wouldn’t take care of me.
I never had a relationship with my father. My mother, on the other hand, sent money for my support from the United States, where she rebuilt her life and started another family.
I’ve never missed anything essential. I liked my mother in everything and she always kept in touch with me, but we never lived together.
Therefore, my great lack in life to date has been affective. It’s a void that I’ve unconsciously tried to fill with religion.
My grandmother took me to mass on Saturdays and Sundays, and during the weekdays, if it was possible and we walked through the park, we also had to go to church.
It’s something she still does sacredly to this day.
It’s not easy to talk about what happened to me, but I managed to ask her a few questions:
Mom, do you remember the priests?
Yes, I trusted them because they made me believe that they cared enough about you.
Do you remember that there was a priest who used to call you to ask permission for me?
Yes. always. I told him to be very careful.
2. Parish of Saint Gertrude the Great
It all started in the main square community of Envigado, a municipality in the greater Medellín area. It’s a big and beautiful church. It seems to me that nothing has changed over the years.
As a child, I loved seeing children and young people at the altar helping the priest during mass.
I admired them in their white tunics and told my grandmother that I wanted to be like her.
As soon as I was 11 years old, the required minimum age, I enrolled in the altar boy (or altar boy, as we call it in Colombia) course. A year later I dedicated myself and began serving pastors in the church.
Envigado is a very Catholic and conservative place, so it was a source of pride for families that their son or daughter was in church and participating in the Eucharist [celebração da Igreja Católica para lembrar a morte e ressurreição de Jesus Cristo] and Holy Week processions.
I was also part of the children’s missionary groups and spent many hours there.
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During her time as an acolyte, Natalia, like the other youngsters, wore a wooden cross hanging on a cord
In this context I met a seminarian who always went to mass on Sundays, stood at the altar and made us sing and applaud.
He was charismatic and known for his good voice and guitar playing. He drew attention because masses were more boring, but what he did was cool to parishioners.
In addition, he was a former student of the Liceu Francisco Restrepo Molina, the same school where I studied.
Around 2002 he was ordained a priest and assigned to the same parish of Santa Gertrude.
It was the same year that I became an altar boy, so I shared a lot with him. Sometimes he asked me to help him with the computer or to make a poster.
I felt special. He treated me like someone important because my handwriting was nice and the posters looked really nice. He made me feel like I was in good hands.
Over time, I became her favorite. She accompanied him to masses outside the parish or to the anointing of the sick.
We used to go in his car and when we came back he always dropped me off at home.
3. The motel
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The motel that Natalia remembers is still in operation. The rooms have their own parking space
One Saturday, after the youth group meeting, the priest asked me to accompany him to a Eucharist at a club in an upscale neighborhood of Medellín.
From there he took me to Sabaneta, a community near Envigado, to an openair restaurant that sold roast beef.
We stayed there for about an hour, had something to eat and drink.
So we got in the car, but this time it didn’t take me to my house but to a motel that still exists.
“Father, why are you bringing me here?” I asked him.
“So we can treat ourselves to something else and not be seen, because maybe a drinking priest is ugly,” he replied.
I stayed calm because it was common for him to drink. Besides, I trusted him. I had known him for a long time and he had never done anything to me.
I remember the rooms were like cabins with their own parking lot.
He drank too much, walked too far and tried to undress me. I didn’t quite understand what was going on. I felt confused.
I never took any sex education classes and it was taboo to talk about sex with my grandmother.
“Let me kiss you. I’ve always been in love with you. You’re a beautiful woman. I want you to be mine,” said the priest.
I asked him to stop but he didn’t care. That’s when I really started to get scared.
I started knocking on the door leading to the garage to ask someone to help me, but he told me that no one was listening and that the reception was far away.
What happened next is the most disgusting memory I have: He took off his pants and shirt, threw me onto the bed, spread my legs and pressed against me.
This image stuck in my mind and I think it’s the moment that evokes the greatest hate in me.
Now that I’m an adult, I understand that it took me a while to climax because I was in a bad mood. But at that moment I didn’t understand anything, it just seemed like forever.
I screamed because it hurt. I was a teenager and he took my virginity.
When I managed to free myself I don’t know how I started to cry.
I cried a lot, but he didn’t care. He said I was his, that I would always be.
I didn’t tell anyone what happened because deep down I knew they wouldn’t believe me.
If something bad happens to someone in Medellín, there is a saying: “Not even if he killed a priest.” [alguém mereceria isso]”.
And me, a 14 year old teenager, how should I deal with this? Who would believe that this respected man in Envigado did something so terrible to me?
4. House of Priests
Shortly after the rape, abuse broke out again, this time in the priest’s house, where the priest lived at the time.
Once he took me into a bedroom and started masturbating. He asked me to look at him.
Perhaps the abuse would continue, but something happened that changed everything: I stopped menstruating.
Since I had regular periods, I knew this wasn’t normal.
I decided to tell a friend without giving her any details about what had happened to me.
She recommended a urine test (pregnancy test), but the result was inconclusive, so I went to a lab for a blood test.
I was traveling when I met Dona Lucía [nome alterado por respeito à sua privacidade]a parish catechist.
I was nervous but I trusted her and told her everything.
She replied, “How did this happen? You were always very close to the priests… I thought maybe it wasn’t so good that you were so close to them…”
I took the test in Envigado. The result was positive.
5. Clinic
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The clinic that Natalia attended is still operating in the same place
When I heard the result, I went to the parish and told the parish priest that I needed to speak to him.
He found me in a place where there was ice.
There I said I was pregnant. He got angry and told me that I would not undermine his vocation, that he was just beginning his priestly life.
“How can I not disturb you when you were with me? What should I do?” I asked.
He told me not to worry, he would sort it out.
He took me to a lady in a popular neighborhood. They talked at first and then she went for a vaginal exam. The lady said there was nothing she could do.
I think she meant it was too early to insert a speculum because the fetus was so small.
So we went to a pharmacy. At the counter, I saw the priest hand money to the clerk, who gave me pills, explained how to take them, and warned me that I would be in great pain.
The priest told me that this would give me my period. He never mentioned abortion [que, no caso, foi ilegal].
I avoided the topic for several days because I was scared. But he called me to put pressure on me. He yelled at me and manipulated me a lot.
Until I took the pills.
At dawn I began to eject blood clots. It was very strong. The pain was terrible. I vomited a lot of blood.
A few days later the symptoms continued and I decided to go to the clinic.
There they had to perform a curettage, a procedure to remove the debris that was left in my body after the abortion.
But I couldn’t do it secretly the way I wanted to. One of the nurses knew a relative of mine and told him about it.
He came to the clinic angry. He said hurtful things to me: “How did you get pregnant and have an abortion? Who knows who you got pregnant with!”
When I got home, my grandmother already knew. He had told her but I denied it. I said that I went to the clinic for a different reason.
It stayed that way. We haven’t talked about that day until now, when I came back and asked her if she remembered that episode.
Mom, what do you remember from the time I went to the clinic?
At that moment I didn’t notice it because you said it was just colic.
And do you remember what happened when I stayed up late at the priest?
Well, that was after you told him that he… and that he arranged for you to have an abortion.
My grandmother could never say the word “rape” in our conversation. It didn’t surprise me because being much younger I had a hard time pronouncing it too.
What she told me was that she was starting to get very angry with this priest.
“Once I went to confession because I had a great grudge against this priest for the trust I had placed in him. I didn’t want to receive communion from him,” my grandmother said.
6. Archdiocese of Medellin
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On the right the building that houses the Archdiocese of Medellín
Several years passed before he found the courage to lodge a complaint with the Archdiocese of Medellín.
I had a hard time deciding to do this. I knew that the Catholic Church had great power and that I was dealing with something very big.
I also felt bad about having an abortion at the time. I was confused and thought I had committed a very serious sin.
I remember being accompanied by a priest who was making handwritten notes in a book. When I was done, he patted me on the shoulder and told me I had to forgive “that she [padres] They are men and they make mistakes too.”
Nothing has happened. They never contacted me again.
I came back recently and asked what happened to my first complaint. They didn’t answer me either. The lady who helped me asked for my details and said she would check the files and get back to me but she didn’t.
So I decided to file a complaint a second time.
On August 30, 2022, the auxiliary bishop, Monsignor José Mauricio Vélez García, visited me.
As he listened to me, he wrote everything down on the computer and read it out loud so I knew what was being recorded. In the end I signed a document with my statement.
I asked him what he thought.
It is a very serious complaint. It must be done with all responsibility and rigor he replied.
He added that he had no idea about my previous complaints.
It was a different time, a different reality.
7. Chile
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Natalia has a wing tattoo that symbolizes freedom for her.
After the miscarriage, I withdrew from the Church and tried to get on with my life.
I financed my technical pharmacy studies myself, but I was not doing well. I wanted to go where nobody knew me.
I heard several people talking about Chile and decided to travel to this far and unknown country to start anew.
I left in 2014 when I was 24 years old. I met my husband there and had my daughter.
It was there that I first heard allegations of pedophilia against Catholic priests.
They found themselves in the midst of a huge scandal uncovered by several men who, as adults, denounced a priest named Fernando Karadima, who had abused them when they were minors.
This got me thinking: Why can’t I also share what happened to me when there are other people who did years later?
I understood that it was never too late and started researching.
I learned that the priest who raped me is still active in a parish in Antioquia.
That was the last impetus I needed to embark on this journey: to return to my country to report and speak publicly about my case.
I don’t think he can spend his life confessing, administering the Eucharist and talking about good things after doing something so serious.
I just want him to pay for what he did. However, not with a suspension or a temporary flight ban. I hope he goes to prison for the crimes he committed.
For this reason, I also filed a complaint with the Colombian authorities in September 2022.
8. The turning point
I stayed in Medellín for a month and a half and took part in all the activities [relacionadas ao caso] I could before I returned to my homeland in Chile.
After all the adrenaline of this trip visiting places and people and making my official complaint to the judge it was not easy to get back to everyday life.
In my house there is my daughter who loves and accompanies me, but also my loneliness and my ghosts.
The sexual abuse has left me with a wound that I cannot erase. It affected my emotional and physical life.
It was difficult to enjoy my sexuality. to be in the situation [sexual] It relives the trauma and brings to mind horrific images of rape.
I close my eyes, breathe, and try not to think about it, but it’s like it’s following me.
It was also very difficult when I got pregnant with my daughter because I felt guilty again for the other life I had lost. I wonder how old he would have been if he had been born.
I am trying to make progress but I am angry because I believe there is no justice in my country. I don’t understand how a priest can continue to act after committing such a great crime.
I have not received any reply from the Archdiocese either.
I can imagine that nothing will happen. Priests cover for each other. If there are complaints, they are at most transferred to institutions where they supposedly pay the fines. Or they’re sent to small towns where no one knows them and they keep playing.
I feel angry and powerless to think that everything stays the same in Envigado.
I didn’t have a good night. I didn’t think it was all going to be so emotionally difficult that it would cause me so much grief to remember and denounce it, but I didn’t want to spend more years with it in my chest.
So I decided to break my silence.
This text and accompanying photos are my final stop on this painful journey back to my childhood and youth.
BBC News Mundo (the BBC’s Spanish channel) has been trying to get information about Natalia’s case for more than five months.
After numerous phone calls to various officials, emails and petitions to the court, the Archdiocese of Medellín agreed to respond in writing to our questions.
The institution confirmed the existence of the two complaints, acknowledging that at the time of the first complaint “there was no formal procedure that exists today” and that, after analysis, it decided to lodge the complaint “until there is evidence that they never did.” receive”.
However, in the list published by Tobón in 2022, the case appears “under investigation”.
Regarding the second complaint, the archdiocese indicated that it had opened an investigation, which was being carried out by two priests, according to the protocol that the Catholic Church has had to follow since 2019.
When asked why it only filed the first complaint with the Colombian judiciary in 2022, the institution explained that it has “signed cooperation agreements with the prosecutor’s office, in which they prioritize cases that have arisen in the last three years and then those who have performed in the last three years.” last five years”.
Regarding the version of the accused priest, the press office of the Archdiocese of Medellín made it clear that he is free to decide whether or not to respond to inquiries from a media company.
All attempts by BBC News Mundo to obtain his version have been unsuccessful.
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Archdiocesan List of Names of Denounced Priests
BBC News Mundo has also had to insist for months on getting answers from Colombian prosecutors, again requiring a court order so the institution could reply to questions in writing.
The State Ministry’s Center for Comprehensive Care for Victims of Sexual Abuse confirmed that it had received Natália’s complaint.
Regarding the list published by Tobón, he emphasized that he had received records from the Archdiocese of Medellín suspecting the commission of sex crimes by priests, but clarified that no investigations had been carried out by the religious body.
In addition, prosecutors pointed out that five of the priests named in the list died and 13 were transferred to another, more specialized unit, including the one denounced by Natália.
Five others are at trial, three are in execution and the rest are under investigation
Some time after our consultation, Natalia Restrepo received an official statement from the prosecutor’s office to which the report had access informing her that her case had expired as the facts happened 18 years ago. This would not continue the investigation.