Thursday, June 25, 2009

Paraguay President Accused of Sex Attack

June 24, 2009
Original Article

A former housekeeper who accuses Paraguay's President Fernando Lugo of fathering her six-year-old son has charged that the former Catholic bishop initiated the relationship by sexually assaulting her.

Benigna Leguizamon, 27, said in a radio interview that the assault took place in the bishop's two-story residence where she worked as a housekeeper.

"He locked me in a room and there he took off my clothes by force and he overpowered me. There was no way of escaping him," she said.

"He asked me not to be angry. Later he continued the relationship until I became pregnant. At that point, he promised to assume responsibility for it," she said, saying their relationship lasted two years.

Her comments on Monday to a radio station in her hometown of Ciudad del Este were printed on Tuesday by newspapers in Asuncion.

Lugo, who has been embroiled in a sex scandal since acknowledging in April having fathered the child of another woman while still a priest, brushed off the latest accusation.

"It's the second chapter of this story. Let's wait for the third chapter, to see what they come up with," he said on Tuesday.

Leguizamon, one of three women to accuse Lugo of being the father of their child, has sued to establish that he is the father of her six-year-old son, Fernandito.

Asked whether he would acceded to her demand, Lugo said he would do "what the lawyers say and what the court determines."

His lawyer, Marcos Farina, said he will object for a second time to a judge's order for the president to appear in court in Ciudad del Este to submit to a paternity test.

Farina argues that Lugo's duties as president of Paraguay, an impoverished country whose population is 90 per cent Catholic, prevent him from doing so.

Lugo has so far accepted paternity of only one child, two-year-old Guillermo Armindo, the result of a relationship with 24-year-old Viviana Carillo.

Damiana Hortensia Moran, 39, also claims he fathered her four-year-old son, Juan Pablo. But she has not sued to prove paternity.

In the radio interview, Leguizamon said a fourth woman with a four-year-old child also was planning to sue the president to establish paternity.

Lugo, meanwhile, has urged the Catholic church to "rethink celibacy" for priests.

"I think that recent events should lead the Catholic Church to reflect on the value of celibacy inside the church," Lugo told Chilean daily newspaper El Mercurio in an interview published on Sunday.

From the start of the scandal, opposition leaders have called for Lugo's resignation. A leftist, he was elected in April 2008, ending a 61-year-rule by the Conservative Party.

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