Daniel Sgardelis: "I'm excited that everything is changing, now the important thing is to continue the fight"

It is ten o'clock in the morning at a bar in the neighborhood of Recoleta in Buenos Aires. Daniel Sgardelis enters with a denim bermuda and a blue shirt. He is deaf, is 44 years old and is one of the victims of the Próvolo Institute of La Plata, a religious school for children with hearing loss, which depends on the Vatican, in which there is a court of law.
allegations of badual abuse and torture.

As soon as he sits down, he starts drawing in the air what he has been living at the institute. It's a kind of encapsulated cry. A verbiage that Leonardo Vandone, his interpreter, specializes in sign language, turns into a marabunta of words: "He says that at Próvolo, every Saturday, the priests forced them to have bad, often beating themselves hands with a stick, that at night a sheet was tied at the waist so as not to violate it ", translates Leonardo.

The Próvolo is a tragic story that began in Verona, Italy, where the headquarters are located. Between 1950 and 1984, more than 25 priests were accused of abusing and badually torturing deaf children. When the denunciations of these attacks gained notoriety, the Church was transferred to one of the main defendants, Nicola Corradi (currently with prison prison), bound for Argentina.

Corradi arrived in the country on January 31, 1970. He was appointed head of the Próvolo Institute in La Plata, Buenos Aires, where cases of abuse, such as Sgardel, were also reported. In 1997, the Church transferred it again this time to the Próvolo Institute of Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza. According to some allegations, he would have continued to abuse until 2014. He was arrested on November 26, 2016 in that province.

With ash-colored hair, an aquiline nose and a bony face, Daniel describes what he's experienced between 6 and 17 years old through signs. His tragedy began when he was three months old and he became deaf in both ears in 1974.

Live isolated

The Sgardelis lived in Tartagal (Salta), where they owned their own bakery, La Gran Espiga de Oro. Teresa, his mother, decided to take her to the hospital. There, he received a drug that caused an allergic reaction. He says that he's not interested in knowing what happened. The truth is that a few days later he lost hearing and the world became a sealed bottle in which he lived isolated much of his life.

Until the age of six, Daniel could not learn to read or write. In Tartagal, no one has taught sign language. His parents were worried. His mother was recommended to set up a religious school for hearing-impaired children more than 1,700 kilometers away in La Plata. They should pay 50,000 pesos a year and Daniel would visit them 15 days during the winter holidays and the three months of summer. I would learn to write and communicate by letter. His parents were pleased with this idea. This is how he arrived at the Corradi Institute, a priest accused of rape in Italy.

"The tortures in La Plata were even worse than in Mendoza, when I started to listen to the victims, I wondered what they wanted, what they were looking for with all this What they said was unreal, then I heard the second, the third and all said the same thing, "says Cecilia Corfield, prosecutor in charge of the UFI No. 15 of La Plata, which investigates cases related to the seat of this city. In this case, there are three accused: Nicola Corradi and José Brítez, who are in pretrial detention, and José Eliseo Primati, who went to Italy and on whom there is a request for extradition presented by the Argentine justice. Britez was the guardian and, unlike the other two, this is not a cure.

There are eight complainants, although there were 250 students in this seat. "All call other comrades who have suffered the same fate, but the vast majority do not dare to denounce the complaints that we badyze in the Justice newspaper, this is, I'm sure, only A tiny fraction of the total number of victims, "said Corfield.

"All of his comrades were mistreated and the priests told them that it was a teaching about baduality." Corradi gave Sunday Mbad, when he had forced them to have bad with them, "says Vandone, the interpreter.

Souvenirs intact

Daniel remembers everything. Corradi boots that fell on his body like a rain of black stones, the keychain of innumerable keys. Consider that in the Próvolo all the doors have been closed. Do not forget that he learned sign language thanks to his companions and that priests compared them to monkeys.

At age 13, he begins to master writing. He has written dozens of letters to his family and he now knows that they never arrived or that they were rewritten. Remember the cold water in the showers. Corradi was not the only one to be mistreated, there were other priests among the badailants, and even a deaf boy raised in the Provolo. He also remembers what he said to his parents and they did not believe a word. They called Corradi to consult him and he told them that Daniel had problems maturing.

"When he was 17, he left Próvolo and declared that he felt free, that he was doing poorly at school and that he had a violent relationship with his parents because he was used to violence.His parents thought that he was crazy, he wanted to kill himself.He was five times, he hanged himself, he searched for a rifle, he s'. is cut off his wrists, he wanted to jump from a bridge, he also ran naked down the street, "says Vandone gesturing.

He was encouraged to denounce when he found that other victims were being brought to justice for the abuses committed by the same priests in Mendoza. There are 14 complainants, one sentenced to ten years in prison and more than ten accused.

Daniel sent a video to LA NACION in which, with sign language, he tells what happened to him. "I'm excited that everything is changing, but now, the important thing is to continue the fight, that's the truth, my life is ruined, but I'm alive, demonstrating that we must continue to fight for the abuse to cease in the future, "he concludes.

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