Six days after an army sargeant confessed that he had murdered Joel Diaz Sarmiento and Yaniris Ruiz Sanchez and that deacon Meregildo Diaz y Diaz was the intellectual author of the crime, the Roman Catholic Church religious congregation, Terciarios Capuchinos announced the deacon would be expelled. Diaz y Diaz was director of the Centro de Educacion Infantil Hainamosa. Family lawyer Pedro Duarte Canaan says that this was a turnaround by the congregation that since the arrest of the deacon occurred they had “protected, defended him before the press and accompanied him to the prosecutors office. He criticized the congregation for not acting when the Ministry of Education’s psychology department sent them a report in 2003 that described Diaz and Diaz “as a psychopathic personality.”
In addition to the murder of the couple, Diaz y Diaz is accused of sexually abusing four youths. Diaz y Diaz is in jail.
On Corpus Cristi Thursday, the archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez Rodriguez, asked for forgiveness for ‘abominable and criminal” deeds that have involved members of the Church. Without mentioning any case in particular, the cardinal said that the events had caused pain, death and un-repairable moral and spiritual damages, and he called upon the judges to be severe in their decisions for these “most serious” offenses.