Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera and his wife, Clara, are being sued for allegedly covering up child abuse at events sponsored by the church they helped found in 2009. The lawsuit was filed in Westchester, New York by a girl and her mother, who were not named in court records.
According to court documents filed in the lawsuit, the girl was sexually assaulted three times, including once at Mariano Rivera and his wife’s home in Rye, New York during a barbecue for children of their Refuge of Hope church.
“Our lawsuit alleges that Mariano and Clara Rivera had a duty to protect our client and missed the opportunity to save her from the harms of sexual abuse,” Adam Horowitz of Horowitz Law said in a statement to the New York Post.
In the lawsuit, the alleged victim claims she was abused by an older girl in 2018 at a Refuge of Hope-sponsored summer internship at the Ignite Life Center in Gainesville, Florida, and then again later by the same girl at the church-sponsored barbecue. Three years later, the son of an associate pastor at the church allegedly also assaulted her repeatedly and “continued to contact her to engage in graphic electronic communications.”
The victim claims Mariano Rivera and his wife “each separately isolated and intimated Jane Doe to remain silent about her abuse” to “avoid causing trouble” for the church. They are also allegedly “falsely promoted their activities and premises as being safe, moral, and otherwise free of a risk of harm when it knew or should have known otherwise.”
The New York Times reports…
In 2018, Ms. Rivera, a pastor at the church, told the mother that the girl should participate in a summer internship run through Ignite Life Center, another Assemblies of God church, the complaint said.
The program, which Refuge of Hope paid for the girl to attend, required her to stay in a dorm with other children without parental supervision, the complaint alleges. According to court documents, the girl was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an older female camper who touched her genitals in the dorm and shower.
The girl, who was about 11 years old at the time, shared information that made the mother concerned for her safety at the camp, the complaint said. The mother reported her concerns to Ms. Rivera, who said that she would investigate and respond accordingly, the lawsuit said.
Mariano and Clara then traveled to the Florida camp and were further informed about the abuse, but allegedly failed to report it and instead told the girl to stay silent in order to “avoid the potential scandal of child sexual abuse in its programs.”
Front Office Sports was able to obtain a Florida police report in which the alleged victim claims to have been molested 15 times in two weeks while at the camp. No charges were ever filed. FOS also obtained a New York police report that includes testimony from the mother about the second alleged assault at the Rivera’s home.
Horowitz Law also noted on their website that “three men associated with that same Florida church and summer camp, Ignite Life Center in Gainesville, Florida, have been arrested for sexually abusing kids within the past 18 months. Like Tavarez, two of the men arrested are sons of Ignite Life pastors and themselves served as church leaders.”
Mariano Rivera, who had already been in the news this week for being the only player to ever be unanimously voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame after Ichiro Suzuki fell one short vote of the same honor, has yet to publicly comment on the allegations or the lawsuit.
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Hall Of Famer Mariano Rivera And His Wife Sued Over Disturbing Allegations
Pinoy Human Rights
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