heals him Julio Cesar Grassi (68) became popularly known in the 90s when he began to be a regular on television shows. The most remembered participation was when Susana Giménez asked him if he was building “a Sheraton (hotel)” with the funds he used thanks to a telephone contest and whose percentage went to the foundation that Grassi directed, “Happy Children.”
But Susana was not the only “celebrity” who trusted the priest. Other presenters and actors, such as Raúl Portal, raised the flag with the role played by Grassi, who also maintained ties with politicians in power, many of them from Menemism.
“Felices los Niños” was founded in 1993 in William Morris, Hurlingham district, next to the Camino del Buen Ayre highway. In its heyday, the foundation had 52 locations, around 400 employees and 6,300 children attended throughout the country.
The foundation stone was laid by the State, hand in hand with the Government of Carlos Menem. The former president and his then Minister of Economy, Sunday Felipe Cavallo, They gave the priest a 67 hectare property on loan which belonged to the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI) and they gave him a generous donation of 5 million dollars in 1993.
Everything changed on October 23, 2002, when the program Telenoche Investiga revealed in a report titled “With the boys, no” the complaints against the priest for sexual abuse of young people interned in the Felices los Niños Foundation.
Father Grassi at the construction site of the Felices Los Niños home that he built with money given to him by Menem and Cavallo.
The case had been initiated two years earlier in the Juvenile Court No. 3 of Morón for An anonymous letter claimed that Grassi was living with a minorThe complaint was lying dormant in the drawers until “Gabriel” spoke up and told how he was abused by Grassi in his foundation office when he was 13 years old.
Grassi was charged with the crime of sexual abuse against several children in his custody. That same year, the courts prohibited him from continuing to live in the foundation, so the priest rented a 7,200-square-meter villa that he paid for with money destined for the foundation.
Video
Video: Gabriel’s Testimony – 2002
But that was not the first complaint against the priest, who has not yet been removed from the Church. In 1991 he was reported in the city of Mercedes, but the courts closed the case.The judge who intervened was Julio Camporawhom Grassi described as “our juvenile judge.”
Five years later, Grassi abused one of the complainants and, in 1998, was accused of abusing another child at the foundation. In 2000, he filed another complaint for sexually assaulting a boy at the headquarters of Felices Los Niños in El Calafate, Santa Cruz.
After the television report, Grassi’s fate was different. A case was initiated that led to an oral trial in 2008, after having managed to delay it for years thanks to a powerful defense that managed to remove the judge and the prosecutor from the case. Among the lawyers who represented him were the Former prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampohe Former Federal Judge Julio Virgolini, Jorge Sandro –who had been the lawyer of Gregorio Ríos, head of security for Alfredo Yabrán–, and Miguel Angel Pierri.
Carlos Ruckauf, Domingo Cavallo, Julio Cesar Grassi and Aníbal Ibarra at a dinner to benefit Happy Children. Photo DyN Archive
On the other hand, the then young lawyer Juan Pablo Gallego legally represented “Gabriel” at the request of Estela de Carlotto, who chaired the Committee on the Rights of the Child.
The courts convicted Grassi only in 2009 for two cases of aggravated child sexual abuse and one of corruption of minorsalthough in the same ruling he was acquitted of 15 other crimes against sexual integrity, which they considered could not be proven.
Despite being convicted, he did not go to jail until 2013, when the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires ratified the sentence and ordered his arrest. In 2014, Grassi was back in the news, this time not for abusing minors, but for divert donations given to the foundation to prison No. 41 in Campana, where he is imprisoned.
The pedophile priest shared a cell with other “famous” prisoners such as the former boxer Rodrigo “The Hyena” Barrios, arrested for gender violence and the femicide Fernando Farré, sentenced to life for killing his wife Claudia Schaefer in 2015 at the Martindale Country Club, in Pilar.
Video
Video: Grassi must be taken – 2013
Meanwhile, in 2016 he was sentenced to two years in prison for the crime of “embezzlement”, that is, for having paid with money from the Felices los Niños Foundation the rent of a country house adjacent to that home for children under judicial proceedings.
The case was initiated by the owner of the property, Alberto Mirenda, for non-payment of the agreed rents, and shortly after the investigation determined that these were made by embezzling funds.
During his sentence, the priest He studied law and graduated as a lawyer. Now he defended himself in a hearing in which his early release was rejected to move to a country house in José C. Paz, in the western area of Conurbano, to a property proposed by his brother, Julio José Grassi.
Grassi was only arrested in 2013.
According to the sentence, the priest would complete his sentence on May 30, 2028. In principle, due to the now repealed benefit called “2×1” he could have been released on August 7, 2026, but in 2022 the Morón Court of Appeals decided to count those years, so his sentence was extended by two more years.
The Catholic Church never removed Grassi from the clergy. The Vatican ordered an investigation into the allegations against him, produced a report but never made a final decision on his status.
Faced with this passivity, he now declared that he would dedicate himself to performing masses and “being a priest” and a lawyer for the “poor.” He will have to do it from prison.
