Puebla: A Christian pastor was sentenced for raping a minor

The Attorney General's Office of the State of Puebla obtained a sentence of 13 years 9 months against a pastor for the equated rape of a girl, this was announced by the institution on March 21 in a statement.

According to the report, in September 2015, Pastor Moisés “N” served as pastor in a Christian church in the capital of Puebla. It was in that year that he sexually assaulted a minor, who came to the scene daily.

The assault was repeated for several months, until February 2015, when the victim told his mother what happened.

With the information presented by the Metropolitan Prosecutor for Investigation, the judicial authority sentenced Moisés N. to more than 13 years in prison, who must also pay compensation for moral and material damage.

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Mexico is the first country in the world to sexually abuse children.

Every year 5.4 million children and adolescents are victims of sexual abuse in the country, however there is a black figure as many victims choose not to report out of fear or shame, according to the institution.

It should be noted that of these violations, 90 per cent perpetrated against girls take place within households and in the family environment. In addition, according to the children's organization Children's Villages, six out of 10 of these violations occur at home and in 60 per cent of cases the perpetrator is a relative or belongs to a close or trusted circle.

The organization has also detailed that out of a thousand cases of sexual abuse committed against minors in the country, only 100 are reported and of these, only 10% come before a judge.

Of these, only 1% receive a conviction, according to OECD figures.

In addition, the crime of rape is prescribed between five and 10 years in many of the country's criminal codes, when according to specialists in the subject, a victim of sexual abuse when he was a minor can take decades to report.

Mexico has a long history of pederasty among members of the Church: according to the Conference of the Mexican Episcopate (CEM), 426 priests have been investigated in the last decade.

One of the most controversial cases and with which dozens of complaints began to be made was that of Marcial Maciel (1920-2008), founder of the Legionaries of Christ and alleged abuser of seminarians.

The priests Marcial Maciel, Nicolás Aguilar, Gerardo Silvestre and Eduardo Córdova Bautista are credited with more than 200 cases of pedophilia, concealed by the Church itself. The first two were noted in the report “Clerical Pederasty of Mexicans in Mexico and other countries 1944-2013”, which was submitted to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in 2013.

“In the case of Father Marcial Maciel Degollado, although there is strong evidence and supporting documents in the hands of the Holy See and the Vatican regarding the sexual abuse committed by the priest in Mexico and other countries since the 1940s, the Holy See authorities did not cease ministry to the priest or limit its activities but systematically protected and covered it up and even, subsequently, it was publicly recognized and promoted by Pope John Paul II, which allowed him to continue to commit crimes against children with impunity for many years,” the document reported.

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