A former student of the Campo Alegre School in Caracas who was abused by one of his teachers, according to evidence, has been waiting for justice for eight years, according to the complaint made by his lawyers during a visit to the newsroom of Last News.
Javier Pipkin and Eddy Méndez Naranjo, lawyers for the student’s family, explained that the lawsuit was filed on December 10, 2014 before the Lopnna Judicial Circuit of the Caracas Metropolitan Area. The victim’s family seeks compensation for non-pecuniary damage.
They explained that the sexual assault against the then student of the aforementioned educational institution occurred on one of the trips sponsored by the College to Costa Rica, during Holy Week in 2009, when the victim was 12 years old. That trip was organized by William James Yahey, a US national, sports coach, who drugged the 30 students who attended that trip and abused them, of which a photographic record remained, according to the investigations.
The lawsuit before the courts of Lopnna de Caracas did not prosper and for this reason the victim’s relatives went to the Social Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, where they appealed through a cassation appeal.
“There have been a lot of hairy hands on that file; For example, the mediation hearing failed because the Association refused to reach an agreement and Judge Greymar Ontiveros Montilla did nothing to favor the victim, as required by law,” said attorney Méndez Naranjo.
Seven years after the student’s relatives sued the Campo Alegre School for non-pecuniary damage, this compensation process was declared null and void on May 14, 2021, according to the ruling of the 3rd Court of Trial for the Protection of Children and Adolescents in the Area. Metropolitan of Caracas. Such decision was endorsed by the Superior Court of Lopnna on September 2, 2021.
The legal team recalled that on March 10, the Social Chamber admitted the appeal through which they request to revoke the decisions of the Lopnna courts. In this regard, on July 12, the magistrates of the Social Chamber declared the substantiation phase of the file concluded and set the final hearing for July 28, 2022, which was subsequently suspended.
“16 hours before that hearing was held, they called us from the TSJ to inform us that it had been suspended. We are alert and attentive to this situation,” Méndez said.
there are other victims
The victim who filed the lawsuit against Colegio Campo Alegre was not the only one sexually abused, according to documents. There are 29 other students who attended that trip from Costa Rica during Holy Week in 2009, who also suffered similar abuses by teacher William James Yahey.
Such a situation is documented by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the main criminal investigative agency in the United States. This US agency published on April 22, 2014 a file with the inscription “Wanted”, reporting on a criminal investigation open to Yahey.
The month after publishing that notice, the FBI convened the students residing in Venezuela who traveled to Costa Rica during Holy Week 2009. The meeting took place on May 9, 2014 in the spaces of the United States embassy located in Cerro Green, El Hatillo municipality, Miranda state.
For that meeting, FBI agents Robert Strickland and Cheryl Shaffer traveled to Venezuela, who interviewed the parents of the victims separately. At that meeting, the FBI officially notified that 30 students from Colegio Campo Alegre “had been positively identified as sexual victims of William James Yahey during school trips to Panama in April 2008 and to Costa Rica in April 2009,” the lawyers said.
The FBI investigation has as support, among others, a seized flash drive which contains a series of photographs where the victims were observed in a state of drowsiness, naked and in poses typical of a pornographic film.
The flash drive was located by the maid that William James had when he lived in Managua, Nicaragua, during 2014. The maid delivered the device to the American Nicaraguan School (Managua, Nicaragua), whose director confronted the teacher. The flash drive contained photos of the 30 students from Colegio Campo Alegre and 60 from Southbank International School (London, England).
In the confrontation with Willam James, he confessed to the director of the Nicaraguan School that he had been committing abuses against minors since 1972. That same day, the management of the aforementioned School consigned the flash drive to the FBI located in the US Embassy in Nicaragua and expelled to William James.
The day after his expulsion, William James traveled to Miami, United States, then to Minnesota, said goodbye to his parents and made an attempt on his life in a hotel on the way.
