54-year-old Christian Priest Held For Raping 5-year-old Girl Student

An Evangelist Christian priest, ‘Father’ Joao da Silva, 54, was caught for sexually abusing a five-year-old girl when her parents found horrific drawings the tiny tot had created depicting the sex attacks.

The attacks took place in Montes Claros, in Minas Gerais, Brazil, during English classes held by the pastor at a local church.

As per this report –

“Father Joao da Silva, 54, is accused of launching the horrifying attacks on the girl – who was a student in a class he taught.

The girl’s parents found the shocking images after their daughter suddenly refused to attend any more of da Silva’s English classes. She was so distraught that they took her to a child psychologist who suspected sexual abuse and urged her parents to search her room for any signs.

Hidden among her books they found six heartbreaking drawings done by their daughter detailing the alleged sexual abuse in horrific detail. One drawing shows a man apparently aroused looming over a child with a look of abject terror on her face.

Another harrowing image apparently shows a girl lying on a bed with a man forcing himself between her legs. Underneath him the girl can apparently be seen to be screaming in either fear or agony.

The father then confronted the priest and then reported him to police.”

The Church’s Child Sexual Abuse Problem

Since the late 1980s, several hundreds of cases of child sexual abuse crimes (and subsequent cover-ups) committed by Christian priests, nuns, and missionaries have come to light in countries across the world such as Ireland, Canada, USA, Australia, France, Germany, Phillipines, Kenya, UK, Brazil, Chile, Bharat etc. The abused include boys and girls, some as young as 3 years old, with the majority between the ages of 11 and 14. Cases have also been brought against members of the Catholic hierarchy who covered up sex abuse allegations, moving allegedly abusive priests to other parishes, where abuse sometimes continued. 

From 2001 to 2010, the ‘Holy See’, the central governing body of the Catholic Church, considered sex abuse allegations concerning about 3,000 priests dating back up to fifty years. Cases worldwide reflect patterns of long-term abuse and of the church hierarchy regularly covering up reports of alleged abuse.

Two recent incidents show that senior Church functionaries continue to be shockingly condoning towards clergy who have been convicted for such crimes-

• The Catholic Church in Mexico acquitted an HIV-infected priest who admitted to raping close to 30 young girls between the ages of five and 10 years old.
• The Vatican directed the South India Catholic Church to reinstate an Indian Catholic priest who was convicted of sexually assaulting minor girls in USA.

(Featured image credit: Getty Images/EyeEm)

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