Judge Máximo Saint Hilaire excluded the Archbishop Office of Santo Domingo from responsibility in the case against a priest accused of murder. The judge determined there were not ties of subordination. A date has yet to be set for the start of the hearings for the case.
The family of murdered altar boy 16-year old Fernelis Carrión Saviñón has sued the office of the Archbishop of Santo Domingo for RD$1 billion, of which 50% would be for local institutions that work with children, such as Unicef and Conani and the other 50% as indemnity to the damages inflicted on the family. Defense lawyer Marco Tulio Reyes had alerted that the Archbishop Office wanted to separate itself from the case. Taveras was murdered on 4 August 2017, with the accused priest, Elvin Taveras Duran, being held in preventive custody awaiting the start of his trial.
The Archbishop has requested the criminal case against the church be thrown out, along with any claims to financial retribution. The lawyer says that the appointment of Taveras was made by the predecessor of Archbishop Francisco Ozoria, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus López Rodríguez. The lawyer rejected the priest be tried by canonic law.
“It is enough that the Catholic Church has mocked the ignorance of the Dominican people. There needs to come a regime of consequences for the Church not supervising their priests and that these use their hierarchical power to abuse, rape and murder children and adolescents who are vulnerable to their evil,” he said.
The teenager was assassinated with hammer blows and stabs last August, and then his throat cut, in the curial house of the Santa Cecilia parish, Santo Domingo East municipality. The family accuses the priest of the crime and of sexual abuse. The start of the trial has repeatedly been postponed.
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Listin Diario
Listin Diario
4 July 2018
