Chile Church scandal: ‘How I escaped the priest who abused me for decades’

In Chile, more than 100 Catholic clergy are being investigated over alleged sex crimes and attempts to cover them up. It’s a scandal that haunts the reign of Pope Francis and has tipped the Chilean church into crisis. But it began decades ago with one man – Father Fernando Karadima, a parish priest in Santiago, who became Chile’s most notorious sexual predator.

“He offered you the vision of being called by the Lord. He showed you a very wonderful world,” remembers Dr James Hamilton, a gastric surgeon now in his 50s.

“He always told us he had a special gift – a kind of miracle gift – that he could see in every young person, if they had been called by God. He was almost a kind of saint.”

Father Fernando Karadima offered the adolescent James Hamilton refuge in the early 1980s. Chile had been under the dictatorship of Gen Augusto Pinochet for a decade. And in those troubled years of killings and disappearances, the church community created by this charismatic priest in the upmarket Santiago parish of El Bosque provided welcome reassurance.

“For a young person, it was like the bee and the honey – it was sweet in a world of difficulties, when you were struggling with your family,” says James Hamilton.

His father had left the family home, so here was a teenager who was vulnerable – easy prey for a practised abuser.

And, as a young idealist, he believed he had only two choices: “Join the people fighting against Pinochet, mostly through violence. Or, follow the road the Catholic Church showed you – the ways of the saints, of peace and to become the voice of Jesus. I wanted to study medicine, so my way was non-violence.”

But although the Catholic Church would be instrumental in supporting victims of the dictatorship, some priests believed Pinochet was Chile’s saviour – Karadima was one of them. James Hamilton was invited to join Catholic Action, an exclusive youth group that met in El Bosque to listen to Karadima talk about heroism, the saints and the need to be humble and obedient. This impressionable teenager felt special, as though he had been chosen.

Then the sexual abuse began.

“You didn’t expect it – it was something absolutely confusing. It couldn’t be possible that this saintly man could be doing all this because of his sexual perversion. It couldn’t be possible,” says Hamilton, remembering his bewilderment. “Obviously the one that was wrong was me…”

And Karadima, wielding a toxic pseudo-spirituality, did not disabuse James Hamilton of these powerful feelings of guilt.

“Something that is very terrible, is that every time he abused me he sent me to another priest to confess,” remembers Hamilton.

“So he drove all the guilt to me. And this other priest who knew everything, he always stayed silent when I confessed about Karadima. He just told me, ‘Be patient, don’t worry.'”

At the church in El Bosque, Karadima was well protected by those around him. He bewitched his acolytes, and trained dozens of young men for the priesthood – four of his proteges would become bishops.

Karadima’s hold over James Hamilton – and the abuse – continued for two decades. It didn’t stop even after the doctor married and had children.

Now that he has spent 14 years in psychotherapy, three times a week, he understands the dynamics of this abusive relationship very well.

But as a young man he felt compelled to comply with his abuser. When he went for dinner at El Bosque with his wife, Karadima would ask him to leave the table and accompany him upstairs on the pretext of a medical complaint that needed attention.

“Many times I tried to distance myself from Karadima, but every time I tried he made a kind of trial with two or three bishops and three or four priests. They put me in a room, and told me the devil was inside me.”

This was what was known as “fraternal correction” at El Bosque – a powerful mechanism citing possession by the devil, and used to bring disobedient members of Karadima’s flock back into the fold.