SÃO PAULO – A priest was arrested on Aug. 18 in the city of Coari, in Brazil’s Amazonas state, after a police inquiry concluded that he abused at least four teenagers.

One of them ended up pregnant and was forced by him to have an abortion.

Thirty-one-year-old Father Paulo Araújo da Silva was initially reported by an anonymous person in 2023. The police launched an investigation and talked to one of his victims. The 17-year-old teenager told the authorities that she and da Silva began a relationship when she was only 14. She said that he used to make and store videos of their sexual acts.

Police deputy José Barradas Jr. told the press that the victim was facing enormous pressure from da Silva when she looked for police help last year.

“She was undergoing strong psychological violence, because the priest not only co-opted the victims in his parish, but also forced them to remain in a relationship with him,” he said, according to local news website Amazonas Atual. Da Silva would never allow the victims to stop seeing him and even said things like “if you’re not with me, you won’t be with anybody else.”

One victim told the investigators that she got pregnant in 2023. He immediately told her to have an abortion.

“That’s the context when a 34-year-old man, who is now on the run, also participated [in the crime]. He’s a friend of the priest and was the person who gave to the teenager a medicine, which she took and which resulted in the abortion,” Barradas said, according to Brazilian news outlet G1.

The unborn child from the victim in the yard of that man’s house, and was also buried there. The deputy added that pictures and the woman’s testimony confirmed that allegation.

All identified victims were churchgoers and members of the Diocese of Coari’s Saint Peter parish, headed by da Silva. According to the police, witnesses told them that the priest would always ask the victims to bring other girls, so they could have group sex. And he always made sure to tape everything.

When the agents broke into the parish to detain da Silva, he was on his bed with a young lady who had just turned 18, “which means that the priest already had sex with her when she was a minor,” Barradas said.

The police took control of da Silva’s smartphone and found at least 260 videos made by the priest showing sex acts with minors. The priest also had R$ 30,000 (about US$ 5,500) with him in his bedroom.

According to the Diocese of Coari, da Silva was born in 1992 and was ordained in 2018.

On Aug. 18, after the priest’s imprisonment, the Diocese released a statement in which it manifested its “repudiation to all forms of abuse and exploitation.”

“The Diocese of Coari expresses its solidarity to the victims and their families and is immediately available to accompany and help [the victims] overcome the traumas provoked by Father Paulo Araújo da Silva’s abuses,” the document read.

The diocese said “all the necessary canonical measures” have been taken. The priest was suspended and can no longer have any activity in the parish. The Church is also available to work with the authorities in the inquiry, concluded the note, signed by the diocese’s chancellor, Father Josinaldo Plácido da Silva.

The priest will be indicted for crimes like raping minors or vulnerable people, ommiting assistance to children and teenagers, producing and storing pornographic contents involving minors, forcing an abortion, and menacing a woman of violence.

The police said the investigation will continue, given that other people may have been involved in the criminal activities led by the priest. Additional victims may also appear, the authorities affirmed.

Crux was not able to locate the priest’s defense attorney. Members of his parish and lay Catholics involved in Church ministries declined to comment on the scandal.

On the Diocese of Coari’s website, da Silva appears as the priest in charge of the local Youth Pastoral Ministry. It was not possible to discover for how long da Silva had been working directly with teenagers in the region.