4 former Cebu altar boys charge Catholic priest with molestation

CEBU CITY – The controversy over the sexual abuses of priests, so far confined largely to the United States, has now broken out in the open in Cebu.

Cebu Archbishop Ricardo Cardinal Vidal on Wednesday received a formal complaint filed by four former altar boys of the Basilica del Santo Niño accusing a former rector of allegedly molesting them.

The letter, signed by the four, now young men in their twenties, identified Rev. Fr. Apolinario "Jing" Mejorada as their alleged molester.

"Our idealism and fervor for our faith and the Church have undergone severe tests and we have suffered loss of self-esteem and depression, thinking that perhaps the guilt was ours of having allowed ourselves to be used in a disgusting manner by a man of the cloth," the boys wrote.

The boys said they had looked up to Mejorada as their spiritual mentor, someone whom they trusted to guide them through the pitfalls of adolescence and mold them deeply in their faith.

"Instead, to our horror and complete disillusionment, Fr. Mejorada abused our trust and made victims out of us by sexually assaulting us and making us instruments of his own sexual gratification and release," the boys said in their complaint to Vidal.

Mejorada, 56, allegedly molested them while they were still members of the Knights of the Santo Niño who served as altar boys during Masses at the basilica.

One of the boys, now 22, claimed to have been molested twice, once on a trip to Ozamis after the Sinulog in 1998 and again in a moviehouse in Cebu in September 1999.

The boys claimed that on the boat trip to Ozamis, the priest touched them, the wrong way" as they lay on their cots.

The alleged molestation happened again when he and a friend went with the priest to see the movie "Hoodlum" at Ayala Center Cinema 2. Only recently did the boy learn that his friend was taken that same night by the priest to a lodge on Mabini street.

The boy said he and his friend were later given P120,000 each to hush up the incident after they told their parents who in turn complained to the Augustinian order to which Mejorada belongs. Their lawyer was also given P80,000.

In exchange, the boys were made to sign an affidavit of desistance and a waiver.

The boys were made to understand that Mejorada would be expelled and sent to Africa, but one of them claimed seeing Mejorada at the basilica pilgrim center last May 25.

"We found out that Fr. Mejorada is back here in Cebu and residing in the Augustinian provincialate," the letter to Vidal said.

Rev. Fr. Ambrosio Galindez, prior of the Augustinian community at the basilica, told reporters yesterday that Mejorada has been undergoing psychological treatment in Lipa, Batangas since two months ago in relation to the allegations.

"Father Mejorada admitted his mistake. There was money that was given to the victims. If he will be dismissed from the order, it is the prior provincial and his council who will deliberate. As prior, my role is only recommendatory," Galindez added.

He explained that "the Association of Religious Men Superiors of the Philippines has put up a regualtion that any priest caught is dismissed right away.

"This is applicable to Father Mejorada even when it happened three years ago as long as the complaints are still there," he said. – Freeman News Service