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The story is as simple as horrific. Years ago, 26 priests and religious were denounced in Italy by 67 alumni for sexual abuse committed between 1950 and 1982 at the Provolo Institute in Verona, which deals with deaf and deaf and deaf people. Rushed by the circumstances, their superiors evaded the action of Justice and offered the defendants two alternatives: either they went home or went "to America." Some of them crossed the Atlantic and landed in Argentina.

Three years ago, the Argentine Justice detected 16 abused children, between 4 and 17 years old. The trial, which began in August, has ended today with sentences of 45 and 42 years in prison to two priests and 18 years to an accomplice gardener. Throughout the process, many of the victims declared appealing to sign language. They could not speak, but finally they listened.

According to 'Clarín', the conviction has a worldwide impact, because Argentina tried and condemned what was hidden in Italy: "It is the first time they have been prosecuted in 50 years for allegations of rape, sexual abuse, abuse and corruption of minors, priests of this religious order with headquarters in Verona, Italy, in La Plata and Mendoza, in Argentina. "

"We do not celebrate, we feel peace," Mayra Garay Sosa, 26, summed up before 'La Nación', one of the victims of the abuses during the years she lived at the school.

The sentence considers proven 20 acts of sexual abuse by religious Nicola Corradi (83 years and sentenced to 42 years in prison) and Horacio Corbacho (59 years, sentenced to 45 years), as well as gardener Armando Gómez (49 years, sentenced to 18 years), all responsible in addition to the surveillance of minors, which was considered an aggravating factor.

"Corradi was until 1969 in the Provolo of Verona. There were recorded the first reports of abuse," recalled 'The Nation'. In the end he has paid much more expensive than another priest, Eligio Piccoli, who is seen explaining in detail the abuses in a hidden chamber of the Italian website Fanpage.it. Piccoli stayed in Italy and was "sentenced" to a life of prayers. Corradi, on the other hand, arrived in Argentina in January 1970 and worked at the Provolo de La Plata, 60 kilometers south of Buenos Aires, until 1997. He was then transferred to the new Provolo headquarters in Mendoza, on the border with Chile, and appointed director of the institute.

Through Provolo, a free school for deaf and hard of hearing children run by the Catholic Church, hundreds of students passed, many of them from humble families and returning home only on weekends.

The newspaper 'Profile' recovered in these days a report of the Italian weekly 'L'Espresso' of 2009, which includes "macabre testimonies of former students of Provolo who were forced into acts of sodomy and touching by priests." According to the Italian magazine, "communication problems" made it even more complex for children to report the facts.

Carlos Lombardi, lawyer of the Network of Survivors of Ecclesiastical Abuse of Argentina, says that "the Vatican knew about this story because Pope Francis appointed a commission in 2013 to see these issues. But he did not get anywhere because the system of concealment of the Catholic Church remains intact. "

Kosaka Kumiko, a nun of Japanese origin, "identified with blows the most submissive children (those who least resisted or complained) to refer them to the priests, who then sexually abused them. Once the rape was consummated, he was responsible for hiding the evidence".

A dozen victims have gone to court today to hear the sentence against the men who turned their lives of pupils into something unbearable in the school of La Carrodilla, which their managers called, with cruel irony, "La Casita de Dios".

The sentences to the two religious and the gardener are not the end of the story. Garay Sosa, the young woman who said today to feel "peace" after the sentence, still does not feel it completely. There is a pending trial against other members of the religious and administrative staff of the Próvolo. Mayra Garay Sosa was also a victim of Kosaka, the Japanese nun, and looks forward to that trial, which should begin in the first months of 2020.

"My daughter was in her care and was responsible for everything she suffered. They told us that the boys were rebellious, that we didn't have to pay attention to them, that all they told was because they felt rejected by society," said Silvana Sosa , mother of Mayra, to 'Clarín'. "I feel anguish and guilt for not having noticed and for not believing at the time what the boys were saying."

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  • Italy
  • The Vatican
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  • Sexual aggressions
  • Sexual abuse
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