Two Catholic priests have been convicted of sexually abusing students at an institute that cared for deaf children. The priests have been sentenced to more than 40 years in an Argentine prison. Their victims say one abuser should have been stopped seven years before his arrest when he was accused of abusing children at a school in Italy.
Father Nicola Corradi, an 83-year-old Italian, sat in a wheelchair on Monday, while he was sentenced to 42 years in prison on November 25, alongside Father Horacio Corbacho, 59, sentenced to 45 years. A lay employee, gardener Armando Gomez, however, was sentenced to 18 years in prison.
The abuse took place at the now-closed Antonio Provolo Institute for Deaf and Hearing Impaired children in Argentina’s Mendoza province. The trial concerned more than 20 instances of abuse in all, including charges of rape, sexual touching, and corruption of minors. The students were reportedly forced to watch pornography or perform sex acts among themselves. The cases involve 10 students, though about 20 have made abuse accusations. The abusers especially targeted children who spent the night in the institute’s shelters, and the victims said they were afraid to report for fear of living in poverty after being expelled or for fear their parents would be punished.
The students were typically from poor families and had communication limitations. The school did not teach sign language but followed a methodology that aimed to teach children to read and speak like those who could hear, the Washington Post reported in February. Students at the school who used sign language would be physically reprimanded. The crimes took place from 2004 to 2016, when Corradi, Corbacho, and others were arrested and the school shut down.
After the verdict, victims of the men celebrated outside the courtroom. “I am happy, thank you so much for the battle, because everyone has supported us. … This has changed my life, which is evolving,” Vanina Garay, 26, told the Associated Press.
Corradi is a member of the Company of Mary, an Italian religious community that operates schools for deaf children in several countries. The schools are named for Antonio Provolo, a nineteenth-century Italian priest who founded Corradi’s religious community. Corradi worked at a sister school in La Plata, Argentina from 1970 to 1994, and former students have accused him of abuse there as well. He was first accused of abuse in 2009, when 14 Italians reported that they had been abused by priests, religious brothers, and other adults at the Provolo Institute in Verona, over the course of several decades. They could not face civil prosecution due to statutes of limitations.
When the Argentine trial opened on Monday, among those protesting outside of the court was ex-student Ezequiel Villalonga, who is now 18. Advocates for the victims have called for the abusers to be dismissed from the clerical state.
