At a preliminary hearing, the judge Yolanda Fletes Canoa specialist in violence from Managua, admitted the accusation and ordered preventive detention against Monsignor Jose Leonardo Urbina Rodriguez, parish priest of the Church of Perpetual Help in Boaco.
The prelate is accused by the Public Ministry (MP) of the alleged crime of sexual abuse in a real contest of rape of a minor under 14 years of age and minor psychological injuries to the detriment of the 12-year-old victim of initials MJVS.
Related news: Regime presents priest José Leonardo Urbina, accused of alleged rape
The MP’s accusation indicates that the prelate was able to commit the crime between the end of December 2021 and the beginning of January 2022. The initial hearing is scheduled for next July 21, at nine in the morning.
Prosecutor’s report
According to the accusation presented by the Ortega prosecutor Emmanuel Alvarez, Monsignor Urbina Rodríguez, «in 2016 he met Mrs. Tomasa Centeno, who is the paternal grandmother of the victim with initials MJVS, and due to the degree of trust between the accused priest and the girl’s grandmother, he took advantage of this circumstance to approach the victim and managed to gain his trust to such an extent that the girl recognized him as her godfather».
It details that in December 2021, the priest asked Mrs. Tomasa Centeno for permission to go with the 12-year-old victim to buy tortillas, so he moved in a van “together with the girl victim and another young man they went to the tortilla shop located in front of a convenience store in the Alcides Miranda neighborhood, in Boaco».
“Upon arriving at the tortilla shop, the priest told the young man to get out of the truck to buy the tortillas and then return on foot, while the priest left in the vehicle together with the girl victim, who told him to go to the front passenger seat, and then Father Urbina drove the vehicle towards kilometer 89 of the Boaco-Managua Highway, in a little-traveled and hilly area on the riverbank, where he parked the truck and touched the girl in the breasts, kissed her neck and told the girl to have sexual relations, to which the victim refused, “adds the complaint.
The prosecutor mentioned that in April 2022, the priest again asked the minor’s grandmother for authorization to go buy tortillas, and in the van he carried out the vaginal rape. He added that the priest threatened to kill the minor if she told about the alleged abuse of her.
It should be noted that Monsignor José Urbina Rodríguez had the public defender Jennifer Hernandez, who did not object to the equation presented by the Prosecutor’s Office, but requested house arrest, which was denied by the court.
Two priests imprisoned so far this year
The preliminary hearing was held after the afternoon of this July 13, the Police presented the priest in a blue suit, surrounded by armed policemen and exhibited by the propaganda media of the dictatorship.
With the arrest of Urbina, there are two priests detained in Nicaragua. The first was Father Manuel Salvador García, a parish priest in Nandaime, convicted of exposing people to danger and for allegedly assaulting a woman, who denied that she had been assaulted by her father, who was later accused and convicted of false testimony.
To date, the Catholic Church has not pronounced itself for either of the two judicialized religious. Despite the prelate’s silence, Boaco’s parishioners have shown their discontent with him and have demanded Monsignor Urbina’s freedom.
