They met in the confessional of the Santa María de Micaela church in Melilla’s popular La Victoria neighborhood. It was May 2022. She, a member of the brotherhood next to the temple (the brotherhood of Nuestro Padre Jesús Cautivo de Medinaceli and María Santísima del Rocío) and a volunteer from the parish, told the priest through the window of this small salon, the situation that I lived through at 30 years old: a partner who abused her and of whom she was afraid. He, “Father Fran”, Francisco Javier CV, 34 years old, ordained a priest in Vélez-Málaga in 2017 and stationed in the autonomous city since June 2021, gave him comfort until he finally gave up celibacy and became his partner.
They were block neighbors, very close to the church, and kept their relationship secret for months. But in early July she showed up at the Melilla police station with a hard drive containing more than 3,000 photos – and videos of about two or three seconds – of women who appeared to be drugged and sexually assaulted by the drug. Researchers have calculated that priest numbers declined between 2017 and 2020. Five of them, residents of Málaga and Córdoba, were identified and told officers from the Family and Women’s Care Unit (UFAM) of the National Police that they could not remember any of the moments recorded one after another by the priest. Some didn’t want to see the photos. They only stated that at the parties that ended at Father Fran’s houses, he encouraged them to have one last drink sometime at the end of the night. He poured “something, a liquid” into the drink and told them, “This is joy.”
The priest was provisionally admitted to the Malaga prison on September 12, by order of the judge of the Investigative Court No. 2 of Vélez-Málaga, who is investigating the case, and charged with four crimes of sexual assault and five crimes against privacy. Father Fran grew up in this town in Malaga and began working as a priest. He was arrested there on September 11 along with his mother, a former Poor Clares nun who, according to her neighbors, worked there. She attended Las Cometas kindergarten and had two sons, both of whom were interested in religion, although only one followed. After his arrest, the priest did not want to make a statement or cooperate with the police.
This is the story of a sex offender obsessed with women’s thongs, given the detailed photos he stole from his drugged victims. He hid under his cassock and took advantage of the trust that his “friends” placed in him, as well as the security – apart from a house and a salary of 1,800 euros – that the church gave him, according to the investigative sources. Until one day it was discovered by accident. She found a hard drive in her house in which he thought there were movies, but when he connected it to the TV, he came across thousands of photos, which he looked at one after the other.
“The church has forgiven me for what I did. These are things from my previous life. “If you continue like this, I will commit suicide,” the priest replied when she asked him about the images he had saved on the hard drive, according to sources close to the case. By this time they were already living together in the priest’s house in Melilla, in the same neighborhood as La Victoria. The step was not easy for her. “I was still in love with him, I needed him,” say sources close to him.
The priest in the parish of Santa María Micaela de Melilla.Cruz de Guía Melilla
The first time she dared to tell what happened to her, she went to the church priest in December 2022. She told him that she had seen some very compromising and inappropriate photos of Father Fran. The priest encouraged her to report the matter to the police and immediately contacted the priest. Father Fran, who had already widely earned the respect and affection of the brothers and parishioners of the neighborhood for his “tremendous capacity for work” – it is said – and his “drive to enliven the community with all kinds of events and parishes”, he said He mischievously showed the priest one of the photos on his computer of him at a bachelor party. “With some kind of giant inflatable penis pointing at a girl’s butt,” sources close to the case reveal. Indignantly, the priest told him that he didn’t want to see anything else.
A few days later, it was Father Fran who, allegedly overwhelmed by the harassment of his then partner with the shocking affair, requested his own transfer from Melilla to Malaga, citing “health reasons”. In January of this year, the diocese offered as a tourist destination El Burgo and Yunquera, two municipalities in Málaga located in the beautiful Sierra de las Nieves, more precisely on the so-called Lovers’ Rock.
She remained alone in Melilla, but out of love she continued to visit him in Malaga, sometimes even accompanied by her parents. Until he allegedly discovered the existence of an alleged second girlfriend from Malaga in May, according to sources close to the case. That ultimately destroyed her. Desperate, hurt, devastated and outraged, she decided to bring everything to light and began sending emails to the diocese asking for an interview with the bishop, but without clearly explaining the reasons why Sources familiar with the case report. She was dismissed several times in the diocese, even though she was congratulated on her recent confirmation.
Tired of not being heard, in June she told everything to one of her dance partners, with whom she sometimes worked in the salsa and bachata group she attended, and who knew she had good friends in the police . It was these police contacts who reported the incident and subsequently brought it to the attention of UFAM. This is how the investigation began, which is still open today and is subject to strict secrecy. It is not impossible that new victims will appear in the places where Father Fran served as a priest. Also in Melilla, where he worked for a year and a half and where the first complaint that gave rise to the case was lodged. At the moment no woman has come forward to report to the police, although some possible victims have contacted the complainant and suspect that she may have attacked them too.
Investigators are continuing to analyze the computer material confiscated from his home, the camera he was carrying, and the cell phone he used to take the photos that he later stored on his computer in folders with the victims’ names. It was only when the arrest and police investigation became known at the beginning of this week that the diocese of Málaga reacted and announced on Monday that it would revoke his priestly license; On Friday they announced that they would act as private prosecutors.
Drugs and parties
Throughout the summer, and after giving police a copy of all the folders of images she had taken from the priest’s computer, investigators focused on identifying the girls, almost all of whom were in their 20s, some even of which the complainant herself was aware. “It used to be young people with whom he met on religious days, trips, excursions, festivals or fraternity celebrations,” police sources said. “At these meetings it was common for the priest and his companions to use drugs such as ecstasy,” emphasize the same sources. Many of the pictures on his Facebook profile of him surrounded by girls relate to some of these parties.
The successive calls from the central UFAM investigators, who took over the case because it was spreading to various autonomous communities, initially surprised the victims themselves, back in August and early September. Some of these young women, completely unaware that they had been sexually abused, called Father Fran and asked for an explanation: “What did you do to me?” “The police called me to show me some photos that you made by me.”
The priest Francisco Javier, in a picture from “La Opinión de Málaga”.G. Towers
And it was these very calls from the girls that alerted the priest, according to sources familiar with the case. Cornered, on September 6 he rushed to file a complaint at the Vélez-Málaga police station against his ex-partner from Melilla for the alleged theft of computer equipment and 3,000 euros. This was confirmation to the police that these thousands of photos of unconscious and half-naked women belonged to Father Fran.
“My mother, who was a nun, taught me the faith since I was little,” the priest told La Opinión de Málaga in 2014. Francisco JC began his postulancy with the Trinitarian community when he was barely 18 years old, although he never managed to become a priest of this order. In 2011 he traveled to Antequera to complete his novitiate and in 2013 he entered the seminary of Malaga. On June 24, 2017, the current Bishop of the Diocese of Málaga, Jesús Catalá, received him as a priest in the capital’s cathedral. A day later he held his first mass in the church of San José. Days later he began a journey that took him through different communities in Málaga: Álora, Carratraca and Ardales, again in Málaga and Alhaurín de la Torre, communities where no one wanted to talk about the religious this week, he reports Nacho Sanchez.
This Friday, the brothers in the Confraternity of Nuestra Padre Jesús Cautivo of Medinaceli and María Santísima del Rocío of Melilla worked hard to polish the throne of the Virgin so that it would go out this weekend in an “extraordinary procession,” “Thank you.” Father Fran, who promoted this type of thing and who turned the Brotherhood upside down in the short time he was there because he had an enormous capacity for work,” some brothers recalled. A mixture of disbelief and rejection pervaded the atmosphere, with some even considering re-baptizing the children the priest had baptized. “He was our spiritual leader after all, who will we trust now?” they asked themselves.
And now her world has been turned upside down since the news broke this week. She lives almost locked in her parents’ house, scared, trying to avoid the media, wanting to reclaim her life and keep her faith.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits