Owner of raided Mexico child shelter was admired
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| A boy peers out through the door of a cell-like room inside The Great Family group home in Zamora, Mexico, Thursday, July 17, 2014. After a police raid on the refuse-strewn group home Tuesday, residents of the shelter told authorities that some employees beat residents, fed them rotting food or locked them in a tiny "punishment" room. Shelter residents were still being kept at the home while officials look for places to transfer them. |
ZAMORA, Mexico
(AP) -- For more than six decades, poor parents struggling to support
their children or raise troubled youths sent them to a group home in
western Mexico run by a woman who gained a reputation as a secular
saint.
Rosa del Carmen Verduzco raised
thousands of children in The Great Family home. She cultivated patrons
among Mexico's political and intellectual elites, and was visited by
presidents and renowned writers.
Then, last
year, parents began complaining to authorities that they couldn't visit
their children at the home.
Residents told investigators of Dickensian
horrors - rapes, beatings and children held against their will for years
in trash-strewn rooms with filthy toilets.
On
Tuesday, heavily armed federal police and soldiers raided the home and
arrested nine caretakers, including the 79-year-old woman known as Mama
Rosa.
The revelations spawned disgust and
horror, but also a rush to Mama Rosa's defense by supporters who include
some of Mexico's most respected intellectuals and some of the very
children who say they were mistreated at her facility.
"It
was a great job that she did in Zamora and now, clearly, she is being
persecuted," Elena Poniatowska, one of Mexico's most prominent writers,
told Milenio Television. "What should be done, really, is that the
government should take better care of people."
The
outpouring of support appears based on the belief that Verduzco was not
complicit in any abuse, even if her age and declining health stopped
her from correctly overseeing the home. It also reflects deep skepticism
of President Enrique Pena Nieto's government, which publicized the raid
as an example of its efforts to protect children.
Tomas
Zeron, federal chief of criminal investigations, told the Televisa
network Friday that he doubts Verduzco will be charged with a crime,
saying she lost control of a once-worthy charity because of her age, and
would probably go free.
The Great Family
appears to have operated more as a commune than a professionally run
children's home. In interviews with The Associated Press, current and
former residents described a chaotic world where troubled teenagers were
overseen by adult residents, many of whom started living there as
children themselves, with virtually no professional supervision.
The
police raid on Tuesday found six babies, 154 girls, 278 boys, 50 women
and 109 men, federal officials said. Prosecutors said 10 people were so
severely malnourished they couldn't determine their ages.
Children
and adult residents couldn't leave the home without a chaperone. Sex
inside the facility was common, both consensual and, according to the
government, rape and sexual abuse.
Luis Perez Juarez, 32, a waiter at a local bar, said he fled the home in 2003 after almost a decade there.
"She
punished me, she hit me, she pulled my ears and she left me without
food for a week," prompting other children to sneak him food, Juarez
said of Verduzco. But, "she gave me a bed, a place to stay, food and an
education, and I am grateful to her for that."
Many members of Mexico's elite remain loyal to her.
"Filth, abuse. Did that merit a military operation?" historian and essayist Enrique Krauze wrote on his Twitter account.
Former
President Vicente Fox, whose administration helped gather donations for
the home, wrote in his Twitter account that "a great injustice is being
committed .... Mama Rosa, we know you and your great work."
The
country's child-protection agency referred many of the children to the
home after their parents said they were financially or emotionally
unable to care for them. Funding was a mix of private donations and
public money. Inspections apparently were lax or non-existent.
Former residents told the AP that Verduzco adopted many of the children, giving them her name.
Paid
professionals living outside the home ran the elementary, junior high
school and music programs, but most work was done by residents who came
as children and stayed on as adults, helping care for youngsters in
exchange for room, board and a tiny stipend. Of the eight people
arrested with Verduzco, one was a professional teacher and the rest were
former residents who stayed on, said Montserrat Marin Verduzco, Mama
Rosa's niece. None have been formally charged.
Inside
the home Thursday, government workers prepared lunch as the nearly 600
residents lounged and played on blankets and mattresses piled in rooms
and on the patio. The children's fate is uncertain, although many will
probably be returned to their parents.
Residents
said consensual sex was common at the home, as were fights among
residents, bullying and physical abuse. Karen Rodriguez Medina, 18, has a
6-month-old baby girl with a young man who also lives there.
"Yes,
I am thankful to Mama Rosita for what she has done, but in other
aspects no, because she allowed violence among us," Rodriguez Medina
said. "She didn't give us diapers or things the baby needed, but she did
give us a roof to live under."
Relatives said
they were allowed only limited visits and when they sought to withdraw
their family members Verduzco requested money for their release.
Maria
Valdivia Vasquez, 65, said she was allowed only two visits a year with
her 17-year-old grandson, whose mother abandoned him at the home a
decade ago. She said when she requested the boy's release, Verduzco
demanded 70,000 pesos ($5,400).
Raquel Briones
Gallegos, 44, said she tried to get her 20-year-old son out in April.
"They ran me out of the
house and said insulting things," she said.
On
Saturday, authorities said the first children had been transferred to
official institutions. Michoacan state Gov. Salvador Jara said 48
children left the home on Friday for Guadalajara in neighboring Jalisco
state, where they came from. Another 19 children could leave for the
same destination on Saturday or Sunday. Other residents have been
transferred to Guanajuato or Mexico state.
Dr.
Alberto Sahagun, director of the hospital where Verduzco is under
police guard while being treated for diabetes and blood pressure
problems, said she was a strict but selfless crusader, adopting children
nobody else wanted.
"She had to be tough, to handle several hundred children," said Sahagun.
He
suggested that as Verduzco grew older, she may have lost control of the
institution. And the iron character that forged her project kept her
from delegating responsibility. "Her sin was not asking for help as she
grew old
