Two Argentinian alumni are accusing a teacher of sexual abuse at the school where Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis, taught. Gonzalo Elizondo and Pablo Vio are 32 years old and were 11 students at the Colégio del Salvador. The site is a centuriesold educational facility run by the Catholic Jesuit Order in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Argentinian friends accuse brother Cesar Destinos of sexually abusing 42 students at the school.
According to El País newspaper, it took Elizondo and Vio 20 years to realize they shared the same story. Shipping died in 2015 and was not brought to justice, but school officials admit to the abuse.
The former students accuse the school of covering up the cases. “Many adults have not done what they should be doing. You have neglected and abandoned us. They knew there was a predator and all they did was take it somewhere else and cover it up,” Vio said.
Argentine friends claim that Destinos committed the abuse in 2002 when he was a 6th grade teacher, but due to the trauma did not tell anyone and tried to forget what happened. The following year, César Destinos was relocated to a location more than a thousand kilometers away, leading to rumors of abuse.
Elizondo said he was reflecting on what happened during a spiritual retreat when he woke up in the middle of the night and felt the accused’s hand in his pants. “He said I would sleepwalk and take myself back to his room, but I never sleepwalked. When I heard the rumours, I realized that he was really bothering me.”
It took Vio a little longer to understand what had happened. Since the school did not have sex education, which is now a compulsory subject there, the students had no idea how to behave or react when Camisas spoke about sexual topics in class.
According to the victim, “he prepared us bit by bit.” “One day in his office he asked me to lower my pants, touched my penis, ran his hands over my body and asked me to compare myself with my colleagues in the dressing room and then tell him about it. I even thought at the time that I was lucky to have someone to teach me these things. No one ever told me that was wrong.”
Elizondo recalled reaching out to college staff to speak out about the abuse in 2019, and three years later dozens of other victims joined the cause, but all remain without response or cooperation from the Colégio del Salvador.
The institution defended itself, saying it had already “apologized to the school community and taken steps to prevent further abuse.”
“Shame”
In 2003, a letter of apology on behalf of the professor had in one of his signatures those of Jorge Black, the current dean, and Rafael Velasco, the then dean. “First we ask forgiveness once again for those who have suffered what they should not have suffered in this school. We are ashamed. We are deeply sorry. That is why we publicly ask your forgiveness.”
The transfer letter also said it was necessary to “protect” the students. “The principals of the school and Society of Jesus did what they thought best at the time, which was to remove the accused from his position and protect the students from further harm.”
The first complaint, according to Vio, took place in 1998, a year after Camisas became a professor. “A family contacted the Rector Luis de Maussion and said that their son had been abused by Destinos. De Maussion dismissed the story and chose to leave Destinos in its place.”
The second complaint was filed in 2001 when a student told Dean Velasco about Destinos’ attempt to harass him. “The dean not only refuted his testimony, but publicly called the boy a liar in front of his classmates,” Vio said.
silent pope
The pope, who was a professor there in the 1960s, never spoke publicly or to students. Elizondo said he wrote a letter to the Vatican in 2020 asking for the cleric’s help, but he never received a response. “He protects her. Acknowledging the abuse would mean ending that protection,” Vio said.