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The
Miami Herald, November 11, 2002.
Pedro Pan memory brings sex lawsuit
By Jay Weaver. Jweaver@herald.com. Posted on Sat, Nov. 09,
2002.
Last year, a Cuban-born man took a peek into his past -- a file documenting
his journey to America under a highly touted Catholic refugee program called
Operation Pedro Pan.
That file, the man says, brought back memories of a priest's sexually
abusing him at two Miami-Dade County group homes for teens who fled Cuba in the
early 1960s.
On Friday, the man sued the priest, Joaquin Guerrero, and the Archdiocese of
Miami, alleging the cleric raped him as a 14-year-old and that the Catholic
Church failed to protect him.
''I was brought up to trust people,'' said the man, now 54, identified as
R.E. in his suit. "Then you find somebody who is supposed to be taking care
of you doing these things. And you don't know what to do.''
The man's suit, filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, is the first clergy
sex-abuse case implicating the archdiocese's venerated Pedro Pan program. The
man, a retired social worker, was among 14,000 children sent to the United
States by Cuban parents who did not want them to be raised under Fidel Castro's
government.
Under Florida law, the man can sue the archdiocese and Guerrero because of
his delayed recall of the alleged events -- even though they date back 40 years.
Catholic officials confirmed Friday that Guerrero, 73, was ordained as a
priest in Cuba and worked in the archdiocese's Pedro Pan program in the early
1960s. Spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta said Guerrero was never a member of the
archdiocese, although he had permission to work there.
She could not explain why he left after serving in the Pedro Pan program and
at St. Thomas the Apostle Church in the South Miami area in 1965.
''We take every allegation seriously,'' Agosta said, declining to comment on
the suit, the latest of more than a dozen complaints alleging sexual abuse by
South Florida priests. She said she doesn't know if Guerrero is still a priest.
A man who identified himself as Guerrero's nephew told The Herald on Friday
that his uncle was in the priesthood in Miami-Dade decades ago but is now ill in
West Palm Beach.
'CAN'T IMAGINE'
''I know he was involved in the Pedro Pan program, but I can't imagine
anything of this sort,'' Luis Miguel said, adding that he has a Miami home and
takes care of his uncle. "I can't understand why anyone would file a
lawsuit after all these years. It's mind-boggling.''
In the early 1960s, the late Rev. Bryan Walsh, an Irish-Catholic priest,
initiated Operation Pedro Pan -- the archdiocese's program that brought
thousands of unaccompanied children from Cuba to the United States.
According to his suit, R.E. was first assigned to live at the archdiocese's
camp for boys in Matecumbe, then transferred to another camp in Kendall. That
was where he met Guerrero for the first time, in June 1962, the suit says.
''Shortly after arriving at the Kendall camp, Father Guerrero asked R.E. to
come to his office,'' the suit alleges. ''In his office, Father Guerrero started
to fondle R.E.'s penis and took him into a side room where he raped and
sodomized'' the boy.
The suit further claims that Guerrero sexually abused the boy three to four
times a week for about six months. The suit also alleges that Guerrero assaulted
the boy at another archdiocese's group home, Casa Carrion.
WROTE LETTER
The boy was eventually placed with a foster family in Oregon, said his
attorney, Jeffrey Herman. During that stay, the boy wrote a letter to the
archdiocese and Guerrero, asking for their help to bring him back to Miami-Dade.
''Father Guerrero told him that he loved him. He was like a father figure in
his life,'' Herman said. "The same priest who abused him also said he'd
help him. That's why he wrote him the letter.''
The boy was reunited with his parents in the mid-1960s. But he never told
his parents or the archdiocese about his alleged abuse -- repressing it for
decades, the attorney said.
Last year, the man learned that Barry University organized archives of all
the Pedro Pan children. He asked for a copy of his file and came across the
letter that he had sent to the archdiocese and Guerrero when he was living in
Oregon.
Memories of the alleged abuse flooded back, he said:
"When you're a child, these are things that shouldn't happen to you.
You don't expect an adult to do these things to you.''
Cubans picked up in Bahamas
Associated Press. Posted on Sun, Nov. 10, 2002.
The U.S. Coast Guard has rescued 22 Cuban migrants from Cay Sal in the
Bahamas, officials said Saturday.
The migrants were reported by an anonymous phone call to the U.S. Border
Patrol on Thursday, according to the Coast Guard.
Crew members from a Coast Guard cutter were diverted to the island and found
the migrants. Medical attention was provided to two children suffering from a
minor skin irritation. The migrants were transferred to another Coast Guard
cutter, which took them to Bahamian authorities in Freeport on Saturday.
The migrants said they were dropped off at Cay Sal, one of several desolate
islands between Cuba and South Florida, on Nov. 1.
''Migrants are often tricked by smugglers and abandoned on these deserted
islands to fend for themselves with no food or water after they have paid for
their transit and are falsely given the impression a vessel will show up to take
them the rest of the way,'' said Capt. James Stark, chief of operations for the
Seventh Coast Guard District.
Cubans who reach U.S. soil generally are allowed to stay, but those found at
sea usually are repatriated. | 
