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Say it ain't so, Mo: Yankees legend, Mariano Rivera, accused of covering up sex abuse at his church [1]
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Date: 2025-01-24
I try to avoid clickbait stories. But I am a New Yorker and a long-term Yankee fan. So when I saw the headline in The Independent, ”Yankees icon Mariano Rivera and his wife Clara accused of covering up sexual abuse at their home” I had to click on the story .
At Yankee Stadium with my daughters in August 2013. The Yanks beat the Blue Jays 8-4. Mo closed it out. He didn’t get a save (run difference) — but he needed to keep his arm in.
Rivera played 19 seasons, all for the Yanks, He ended with the MLB career record for saves (652), In 2019, he became the only player elected to the MLB Hall of Fame with 100% of the votes.
I last saw him play in August 2013, his final season. He closed out an 8-4 win over the Blue Jays. I didn´t think I would see him pitch as he wasn’t eligible for a save based on the score But he hadn’t played in a few days. And he needed to keep his arm in. Coincidently, the man who came closest to Mo´s perfect HoF vote, Ichiro Suzuki , also played in that game.
At the time. I didn‘t know much about Mo’s personal life as he was a laconic man. Not that I cared. He did his job better than anyone else has ever done it. And he was never in the tabloids.
Then in 2019, I discovered that the quiet Panamanian--American was a far-right nutter — a brown man in love with a loudmouth white supremacist. That September, Trump awarded Rivera the Presidential Medal of Freedom for saying nice things about him.
Mo turned out to be deeply religious. And like so many fundamentalist Christians he had thrown in with Trump. Nothing Donald could do cooled Rivera’s ardor. The orange man's racism, the crimes, the misogyny, the adultery, and the general immorality did not put a dent in Mo´s support.
In April 2024, Rivera again endorsed Trump.
Based on his history, I should not be surprised to find out that Rivera — and his wife, Clara — are now accused of turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of a minor. The epitome of a non-story used to be ‘dog bites man.’ It is now ‘religious MAGA covers up sex crimes’.
This is how The Independent reported the story:
But last Thursday, a legal complaint was filed in the Supreme Court of Westchester County accusing the Riveras of being negligent in their supervision and allegedly failing to act upon learning that a young girl from their church [Refuge of Hope] was being sexually abused.
The report continues
According to the filing in the civil case, the plaintiff – known as “Jane Doe” – claims she was sexually abused by an older minor girl – anonymised as “MG” during a summer internship in 2018 at the Ignite Life Center in Gainesville, Florida, which was supported by Rivera’s church. The victim and her family were also members of Refuge of Hope in New York, the suit alleges. A year after the alleged abuse began, Mariano Rivera was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Donald Trump.
Clara Rivera, who runs Refuge of Hope’s day-to-day operations, allegedly convinced the girl’s mother to allow her to attend the internship in Florida. The Riveras then traveled to Florida to visit the victim where the lawsuit says they “learned or should have learned information” about the sexual abuse.
The complaint adds: “Rather than take sufficient action to end the sexual abuse of Jane Doe (the victim), the Riveras each separately isolated and intimidated Jane Doe to remain silent about her abuse by MG (the suspect) to avoid causing trouble for Refuge of Hope and the Ignite Life Summer Internship.”
The complaint also alleges that the abuse continued when the victim returned to New York — that she was abused at a barbeque hosted by the Riveras at their former Brook View property in Rye, New York, in August 2018.
It wasn’t an isolated incident. The girl claims she was also sexually abused by Ruben Tavarez Jr., the adult son of the Refuge of Hope Associate pastor Ruben Tavarez Sr., in August 2021. Her suit argues that the Riveras failed to adequately supervise or act on known risks, leading to these incidents.
Her complaint adds that Mariano and Clara Rivera “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.”
So far, a Rivera apologist could point out that nothing has been proven — and the case rests on the testimony of one minor victim. However, the Ignite Life Center (the Florida Church the Riveras support, and had convinced the victim to attend) has a history of abuse.
Three individuals connected with the church have been arrested for child sex crimes, including former volunteer Gabriel Hemenez who was sentenced to five years in prison for two felony counts of molesting a minor in March 2024.
The son of the church’s head pastor Christian Vargas was also charged with sexual battery of a minor in July 2023 and the son of a former associate pastor Noel Cruz was sentenced to three years probation earlier this month for sexual battery of a minor.
Sadly, this will not be the last case. MAGA America is a sewer where religious hypocrites have elevated a moral degenerate to divine status while they commit and cover up vile crimes against children. It is no wonder they think pedophile rings are run out of pizzeria basements and sex traffickers peddle their victims for profit. They´re doing it. So they assume everyone else is.
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https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/1/24/2298983/-Say-it-ain-t-so-Mo-Yankees-legend-Mariano-Rivera-accused-of-covering-up-sex-abuse-at-his-church?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=latest_community&pm_medium=web
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