2023-05-29 23:30:24
The middle The country launched in 2018 an investigation into horrible cases of pedophilia that occurred in the Spanish Church, which led to crude testimonies of sexual abuse in the Juan XXIII boarding school in Cochabamba, in Bolivia.
This Spanish report brought together several victims of pedophilia from the Juan XXIII school, which were mixed in a publication where the victims gave details of their experiences.
The note begins with the victim’s statement revealing that there were students who resisted sexual abuse, but they were expelled.
One of the accounts of a student says that “instead of closing his eyes as his boarding school classmates did, he would get up from bed in silence.”
After this, “he dressed in several layers of clothing and went to sleep, hidden, among the bushes in the patio next to the pool” of the Juan XXIII school located in Cochabamba.
According to the report, he “preferred the cold than the Spanish Jesuit Alfonso ´Pica´ Pedrajas take him back to his room at night to abuse him.”
“I was like this for two or three months. I couldn’t even sleep well. My grades dropped, I didn’t pay attention in class… my mind was elsewhere. I was avoiding him”, explained ‘Aldo’.
With a fictitious name, this victim narrates 40 years later, his time at the Juan XXIII school in Cochabamba on a terrace in this Bolivian city.
Testimonies of pedophilia in the Juan XXIII boarding school in Bolivia
As detailed, Aldo is part of the dozen victims and witnesses who have denounced the systematic sexual abuse of children by at least five Jesuits (four Spaniards) in this school.
All of them, former students of decades ranging from the seventies to the nineties, repeat the same phrase: there were more than a hundred victims and the students, Jesuits and teachers, knew what was happening there.
In the large room where the bed from which Aldo got up every night was, there is no longer any trace of bunk beds or students.
Years ago, John XXIII ceased to be a mixed boarding school. Now it is one of the headquarters of Fe y Alegría, the institution that manages the Jesuit centers in Bolivia.
There are hardly any traces left of that boarding school of horrors, although within its walls one still perceives the trail left by the ghosts of fear, impunity and silence.
“This place was my home, and I have great affection for my colleagues. They were like brothers. Now my perception of John XXIII has changed. I feel that this was the holocaust of pedophilia,” says one of the witnesses.
Aldo -fictitious name- is one of the dozen victims and witnesses who denounced the systematic sexual abuse of children by at least five Jesuits.
All of them, former students, repeat the same thing: there were more than a hundred victims and the students, Jesuits and teachers knew what was happening there.
“We protected ourselves”
After spending several months outdoors, made a group of friends.
There were four of them, about 14 years old, and together they swore an oath to protect each other and prevent Pedrajas, known as Pica, from sexually assaulted them.
“We protected ourselves. We were together and in public, in front of the educators, we imitated him. We touched each other as a joke and we said the phrases that he used to say to the children when he touched them. He got scared and stopped looking for us.” account.
Despite this, the four friends continued to see how Pica looked for other companions at night. To try to stop it, they warned everyone during classes and recess times.
“The worst thing: there were educators who lived and slept there. And they knew too. They never did anything.” says Aldo.
Some anonymous victims told El País that, already in the seventies, when the school began its journey, Pica entered the bedrooms at night and assaulted them with impunity, in their beds.
“He was a snake charmer, a manipulator,” says one of them.
Others suffered his abuse during the excursions that he organized outside the school and many others did it in his room.
Report from El País
The Juan XXIII boarding school in Bolivia was not a conventional center.
His students, the majority coming from humble families from all over Bolivia and with scholarships, were selected through high-level examinations.
Inside, they not only studied, they were also organized as a microstate, which they called “little new Bolivia”.
Pedrajas is not the only one accused of abuses during these decades.
During the 1982-1983 academic year, Pedrajas was sent to the Oruro mines by the order as punishment for his abuses.
This is how one of his victims tells it. That year after his departure, the Spanish priest Francesc Peris, known as Chesco, arrived. A woman accuses him of abusing her and many other colleagues.
“I witnessed that. I saw it with my eyes.” says a former student, also a victim of Pica.
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