Accused by dozens of women, former priest is convicted of raping a 3-year-old in Brazil

SÃO PAULO – A former priest, who was accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women in Brazil, was sentenced last week to 24 years and nine months in prison for raping a three-year-old child in 2016.

The court also ruled that Bernardino Batista dos Santos, 78, will have to compensate the victim – who was not identified, given that the case is being handled under seal – at 30,000 Brazilian reais (about US$ 5,580).

The crime occurred during a visit to a country property that was owned by the former priest in the city of Tiros, Minas Gerais State. The girl told her mother what happened and a number of witnesses confirmed that they could hear the victim crying.

Mother and daughter currently live outside Brazil. They were reluctant to file a complaint against the priest, but did so after they were informed of another abuse case involving a young child.

Dos Santos’s conviction was received with joy by Carolina Rocha, a 34-year-old lawyer who was also a victim of the former priest and has been an informal organizer of a group of women who made complaints against him.

“Not even in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would see him convicted,” Rocha told Crux.

She said that she was abused by dos Santos in the same rural property in Tiros when she was just 8 in 1999.

“My family has always been fervently Catholic and had a vivid participation in the activities of the parish headed by dos Santos in Belo Horizonte. My parents were friends with him,” Rocha said.

In a vulnerable moment for the family, when her parents were divorcing, she and her mother were invited by the priest to visit the ranch, along with other families of their community.

“In the morning, my mom left to buy bread and I remained there, sleeping. Suddenly, I felt him laying down over me and he started touching my private parts,” she recalled.

She ran away and hid among trees until her mother came back. Rocha told her what happened and her mother confronted the priest, who defended himself by saying that “children imagine things.”

Rocha said her mother was not totally convinced of what happened and they kept frequenting the parish. But from then on, her mother never left her alone with him anymore.

“It was a desperate situation, because I had to keep meeting him and I was scared to death. My first communion happened shortly later and I couldn’t hold my tears,” Rocha said.

She said Dos Santos would take advantage of every situation in order to abuse kids – trips to his ranch, meetings in his apartment or in the sacristy, confessions. Besides the work as a vicar, dos Santos was the principal of a private school connected to the parish.

“He always requested the children to get into the room alone with him in order to confess. That time, however, my mother went with me,” Rocha said.

Over the years, she pushed away the bad memories of the abuse and eventually stopped thinking about it, at times believing it had been just a dream.

“But I developed many emotional problems, including an eating disorder and panic disorder. I had to take psychiatric medicines for a long time,” Rocha declared.

In a therapy session, a few years ago, she finally recalled the event and talked about it.

In 2021, Rocha saw a blog post praising the priest. In the comments section, however, numerous people were claiming dos Santos was a sexual predator.

She decided to leave her number there and invited other victims to get in touch with her. That’s how the victims’ group began.

“A reporter saw my comment and asked for an interview. That article led the police to launch an inquiry on dos Santos,” Rocha said.

With the police investigation, the Archdiocese of Belo Horizonte also launched an inquiry on the priest. He was suspended from his ministry in November 2021.

At that time, Rocha and other victims were received by a commission formed by the Archdiocese.

“They listened to us, but they never gave us any information about the process after that,” Rocha said.

In parallel, with the news on the case, more and more women began contacting her. She said that 73 victims have already talked to her about dos Santos’s crimes.

Only in 2024, when dos Santos was arrested for the first time – he remained in jail for one month – the Archdiocese of Belo Horizonte looked for Rocha again, she said.

At that time, the Church affirmed that the priest had already been laicized by the Vatican. But news website G1 found dos Santos’s name in the 2024 directory of the Archdiocese. After an article about that went out, his name was erased from the catalogue.

Attorney Ana Carolina Oliveira, who represents dos Santos’s victims, said that most cases have already reached the statute of limitations.

“Dos Santos began abusing children in 1975. Many victims take decades to open up their hearts about sex crimes like those,” she told Crux.

According to Oliveira, the victims’ ages ranged between 3 and 11 at the time the crimes happened. The majority of the victims were girls, but over the past few years a few men also claimed that they were abused by dos Santos.

She thinks more victims will emerge after dos Santos’s conviction – and maybe crimes that haven’t reached the statute of limitations yet will be taken to court.

“We’ll also appeal the decision regarding the compensation amount. We had asked for 2 million Brazilian reais [around US$ 372,000] and a much smaller amount was paid. But we learned that he sold his Tiros property for 4 million Brazilian reais [US$ 744,000] when the inquiry was already happening,” Oliveira said.

She said the Archdiocese knew decades ago that dos Santos perpetrated abuse, but failed to act.

“We managed to obtain evidence that the Archdiocese knew what was happening since the beginning of the 2000s,” Oliveira claimed.

She said a collective lawsuit is being planned, involving not only the former priest but also the Church.

Dos Santos is currently in house arrest. His attorney, Leonardo Diniz, sent a statement to Crux affirming that he’s “preparing an appeal in which he will demonstrate, in a technical and measured manner, that the facts underlying the sentence handed down by the Tiros District Court never occurred” and, for that reason, “he will seek the complete reversal of the decision, with the consequent acquittal of the defendant.”

“[…] The defendant’s conviction is unjust, first and foremost because the alleged victim was never heard, either during the police investigation or in court, and there is no direct account attributed to her in the case file,” the declaration reads, adding that “the entire body of evidence supporting the prosecution is limited exclusively to statements made by family members, without the indispensable production of technical evidence or direct testimonial proof.”

According to Diniz, the Public Prosecutor’s Office itself “withdrew its request to hear the child, arguing that she currently resides outside Brazil, a circumstance that made an effective determination of the factual truth impossible and significantly undermined the adversarial process and the right to a full defense.”

Dos Santos, Diniz claimed, doesn’t even know the alleged victim.

Carolina Rocha and many other victims will keep accompanying the case against dos Santos.

“I still live near the parish. Even today many in the parish still insult me. The community reacted against me,” she said.

She also has to live with a number of spiritual consequences.

“I still have my faith, but what I experienced within the Church was taken from me. Today, I can’t even hear about the Church, and I feel unwell if I have to attend a Mass or a baptism,” Rocha told Crux.