(ANTIMEDIA) A nun named Kosaka Kumiko was arrested and charged at the start of May on suspicion of helping priests sexually abuse children at the Antonio Provolo Institute, a school that caters to the hearing impaired in Argentina, authorities said. Kumiko has also been charged with physically abusing the students herself.
The students in the school would call her the “bad nun,” as she was supposed to be taking care of them but would often send them into rooms to be sexually abused by priests. Other allegations claim she committed abuse herself and forced the children to watch pornography.
According to Argentine news reports, as analyzed by the Washington Post, a five-year-old girl was forced to wear a diaper in class to conceal the bleeding that resulted from sexual abuse at the hands of a priest.
The school has “a little chapel with an image of the Virgin and some chairs where the kids would get confession and receive the communion. That’s where some of the acts were happening,” former lead prosecutor Fabrizio Sidoti told the Associated Press.
The allegations are just the latest in a trove of sexual abuse scandals that have plagued the Catholic Church across the globe.
After a month of being a fugitive, Kumiko sat through a nearly nine-hour hearing before a judge, according to La Nacion. Inside the courtroom, she wore her habit and a bulletproof vest while denying all the accusations.
According to Argentine news outlet Clarín, prosecutors allege Kumiko targeted the most vulnerable children and covered up abuse by her superiors. As noted by the Washington Post, because the other children were deaf, only the abusers could hear their victims cry.
Unsurprisingly, dozens of students from Italy’s branch of the Provolo Institute had similar stories of sexual abuse. Some victims accuse a priest named Rev. Nicola Corradi, the same priest currently being charged in Argentina, according to the Associated Press.
Despite receiving a letter in 2014 regarding Corradi, the Vatican took no action. The Vatican declined to comment on Corradi’s eventual arrest.
The Washington Post noted that Pope Francis wanted to assure the victims that the church took measures to protect children and prevent sexual abuse. These assurances are, in reality, empty and devoid of veracity.
“No other pope has spoken as passionately about the evil of child sex abuse as Francis. No other pope has invoked ‘zero tolerance’ as often. No other pope has promised accountability of church superiors,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of Bishop Accountability, an online resource focused on clerical abuse, as reported by AP. “In light of the crimes against the helpless children in Mendoza, the pope’s assurances seem empty indeed.”
In an apparent attempt to completely undermine the real suffering of the victims, Kumiko said the allegations are nothing more than a “strategy of the victim’s families to get money.”
According to Prensa Libre, lawyers called Kumiko “the demon with the face of a woman” – a title that seems aptly fitting.
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