Catholic Church Goes After Sexual Abuse Victim

The Catholic Church has officially stooped to an all-time new low. The Church in Sacramento is suing a sexual abuse victim.

Sacramento Church Sues Alleged Sex Abuse Victim

Says Man Missed His Opportunity

(CBS13) SACRAMENTO In a move critics call bizarre and unprecedented, the Catholic Church in Sacramento is turning the tables. The church is suing a man who says he was sexually abused by a priest when he was a child.

The Sacramento Roman Catholic Diocese, headed by Bishop William Wiegand is suing Hector Rubio. Rubio says when he was a child he was sexually abused by father Gerardo Beltran who was once a priest in the Sacramento diocese. Advocates for those abused by priests are outraged.

“It's wrong for the bishop to play legal hardball. It's especially wrong for a bishop to sue a child sex abuse victim,” says Nancy Sloan with S.N.A.P.

Rubio, who now lives in Texas, says Beltran sexually abused him more than twenty years ago, when both of them lived in California. In recent months, Rubio has filed and then withdrawn civil lawsuits against the Sacramento diocese.

Bishop Wiegand and the diocese say Rubio has no right to sue them and that he has missed his opportunity. On Monday a diocese attorney, Andrea Miller told CBS13, "we believe this is barred by the statute of limitations."

Leaders of a group called S.N.A.P., which stands for ‘survivor’s network of those abused by priests’, say bishop Wiegand is trying to intimidate victims of priests.

“The bishops money could be used for something better than suing a child victim and it could be spent better trying to get the perpetrator back to Sacramento to face justice,” says Joey Piscitelli with S.N.A.P.

The perpetrator in the case is Gerardo Beltran, a priest who fled Sacramento in the early 1990's after a warrant was issued for his arrest for molesting children. Less than a year ago CBS13 went to Iqualita, Mexico, a small village where Beltran has been hiding from U.S. authorities and saying mass for years. For nearly 15 years Sacramento County prosecutors and federal authorities have not been able to bring Beltran back to Sacramento to face justice.

CBS13 requested interviews with Bishop William Wiegand and the diocese lead attorney in the case James Sweeney. We never heard back from either of them. In fact, CBS13 first requested an interview with bishop Wiegand way back in January after returning from Igualita, where Gerardo Beltran is reportedly hiding. He said “no” then, and Bishop Wiegand continues to refuse to talk to CBS13 about Beltran.

Missed his opportunity? Missed his opportunity for what? To sue the Catholic Church, the diocese, the Bishop, the priest? The truth of the matter is, he missed an opportunity at a normal childhood. He missed an opportunity at a life free from abuse. He missed an opportunity to be able to hold his rapist accountable for his crimes. He missed all of that because of the Catholic Church. How dare the Catholic Church hide behind the "statute of limitations" excuse to justify their disgusting, reprehensible treatment of this man who did absolutely nothing wrong, and has only gotten abuse in return.

Like it has been suggested, the Church could use the money spent on this ridiculous lawsuit to bring this man's rapist back to the United States to face punishment for what he did. However, I won't be holding my breath on that one. I'll end up dying because it will be a cold day in hell before the Catholic Church would ever dare to lift a finger to help the victims of sexual abuse at the hands of priests. And by helping the victims, I don't mean throwing cash in their faces to keep their mouths shut!!

As if Catholics aren't ridiculous enough, I heard a lie being spewed by a Catholic today about the whole Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. It's not like I haven't heard this lie a million times before from Catholics. But, the fact that the lie is still being touted shows how truly ignorant some people still are. This person said, "The priests who were involved in the sexual abuse scandals were homosexual, or had homosexual tendencies."

In other words, they were gay so what did you expect? After all, don't you know that gay people like to prey on innocent children? Don't you know that all gay people rape innocent children? Don't you know that sex is the only thing that gay people think about? I mean, they were all gay. How else can you explain the abuse?

One of the problems with that argument is that some of the children who were raped by priests were FEMALE!! Thus, the priests were NOT HOMOSEXUAL!! Oh, but I forgot. They must have had homosexual tendencies. Yes, that's right!! That's the story we'll go with!!

It's absolutely asinine that some Catholics would rather essentially justify the coverup and the abuse itself by claiming that the abusers were all gay instead of facing up to the fact that the Catholic Church stood by and let it happen. They would rather make shit up and blame it on being gay instead of acknowledging the TRUTH. Who is being ignorant now?