German-born priest acquitted of abuse charge in Bolivia

SÃO PAULO, Brazil – Amid numerous abuse scandals involving the clergy in Bolivia, the bishops’ conference made a point of releasing a statement on Oct. 7 about a priest who was acquitted of an abuse charge after a year-long lawsuit.

The Commission of Abuse Prevention and Culture of Care of the Bolivian Bishops’ Conference published a document in which it informed that German-born Father Otto Stauss, 84, who had been accused of committing abuse in 1998, was ruled not guilty and can now go on with his ministry.

“Every act of violence must be investigated, with respect for the due process and both parties’ fundamental rights; in the present case, Father Strauss […] submitted himself to the penal lawsuit in the city of Tarija, to where he traveled in order to defend himself,” the letter read.

The statement emphasized that Strauss wanted to submit himself to the judicial procedure, despite serious healthcare conditions.

“Such a sensitive and complicated theme like sex abuse must be handled with all seriousness, suitability, transparency, and impartiality, so to put an end to all forms of impunity and build a culture of care, with safe and healthy environments, which makes us all committed to the eradication of violence,” the statement said. That’s why Strauss was suspended from his ministry while the civil lawsuit was in place. But the allegations proved to be false.

Strauss was acquitted on Sept. 9 by a judge in Tarija, about 100 miles southeast of the city of Camargo, where he has been working for decades. The case was taken to the court by Tarija prosecutor Sandra Gutierrez after a man accused the priest of an abuse allegedly perpetrated in 1988, when he was a boy.

In January of 2024, Gutierrez told Tarija newspaper El País that not only Strauss was facing an abuse lawsuit, but also Father Milton Murillo, accused of 30 cases of abuse in a seminary, and Father Jorge Machicado, who supposedly committed harassment as a professor and pastoral minister at the Catholic Bolivian University.

“We have filed an indictment with sufficient evidence to prove that they are likely the perpetrators, and we hope that they will also be convicted of the crimes of which they have been charged,” Gutierrez told the newspaper at the time.

But Strauss’s attorneys managed to demonstrate that there wasn’t enough evidence against the priest. Lawyer Carlos Ortega told the local newspaper Correo del Sur that after one year of tiresome hearings, it became evident that the alleged abuse didn’t happen.

“We have managed to prove that a plot was set up against him, and proof of this is that we have an acquittal,” Ortega said.

The prosecutors and the victim had 15 days to appeal but they didn’t do so, and the case was finally closed.

Strauss arrived in Bolivia in 1969 and has always worked in the region of Camargo and nearby towns.

His focus has always been to help the poor people of the area, especially the peasants, German-born Auxiliary Bishop Adolfo Bittschi Mayer of Sucre told Crux.

Bittschi Mayer worked side-by-side with Strauss when he arrived from Germany in 1983. He said over the years Strauss opened several rural ways to improve the region’s communications, put in pits and pipes in numerous regions to provide clean water for the peasants, founded schools and shelters, and created the first clinic in Camargo.

“He would ask for donations from Germany and thus implement all such projects in Bolivia,” Bittschi Mayer explained.

The bishop, who knows many people in Camargo, talked to local residents about the case last year and was told by colleagues of the alleged victim that he has never been a churchgoer and never visited the parish where the abuse supposedly happened.

“His family frequently received food kits from Strauss, and even their house was given to them by him,” he said.

Bittschi Mayer claimed the supposed victim’s allegations as “barbaric creations of his mind” and said that he had economic interests.

“Strauss was on vacation in Germany when the abuse supposedly happened. All such contradictions were defined by the prosecutors as errors provoked by the trauma. But they were only lies,” he added.

Software engineer Daly Rodríguez first met Strauss when he was an altar boy in a town near Camargo, more than three decades ago. Since 2017, he has been working with the priest at the Cardinal Maurer Foundation, created by Strauss.

“I have never heard any commentary concerning potential abuses committed by Strauss. It’s something that’s not part of his life and his journey as a priest,” he told Crux.

Rodriguez knows two of the alleged victim’s brothers and said that they have criminal records. The supposed victim was himself involved in robbery and murder when he was a teenager.

“They made up those accusations in order to make some money,” he said.

At the same time, accusing members of the clergy of perpetrating crimes has become something common in Bolivia lately and that phenomenon is partially politically motivated.

Since the scandal involving Spanish-born Jesuit Father Alfonso Pedrajas came to light in April of 2023 – known as Padre Pica, the man committed sex abuse for decades in a Jesuit school and wrote down his crimes in his diary – many other cases gained media attention.

Critics of the left-wing party Movement towards Socialism (MAS), led by President Luis Arce and former President Evo Morales, say that the government wants to reduce the Church’s influence on the Bolivian people and has been promoting juridical persecution to members of the clergy.

“The charge against Father Strauss had a political nature. Prosecutors are pressured by the government to do that kind of thing,” Rodríguez said.

Only one week before the accusation against him in 2023, Strauss was honored with a great ceremony in Camargo. People from 30 rural communities came to the city to show their gratitude to him.

“A simple priest made so much for the people, while the politicians have never solved the real problems. I think that ceremony may have created envy among powerful people in the region,” Bittschi Mayer said.

The bishop said Strauss has undergone 10 hip surgeries over the past years and they all failed to solve his problems, so he has been using a wheelchair. Being obligated to travel to Tarija to attend the hearings brought great suffering to him, he added.

“And in his spiritual dimension he was also suffering. But he never abandoned his habit of praying for several hours every day and was able to keep his strength,” Rodríguez said.

He’s now at peace, he added. But his real story has to be correctly told, Bittschi Mayer said, “after his image was so tarnished.”