Shelter founder leaves hospital
MEXICO CITY, July 23, (Agencies): The elderly founder of a Mexican shelter accused of serious child abuse has been released from hospital where she had undergone a series of tests.
Doctors at the exclusive Puerta de Hierro Medical Center near the western city of Guadalajara said Tuesday that Rosa Verduzco, better known as “Mama Rosa,” responded well to heart catheterization and decided it was no longer necessary to keep her under observation.
“It went very well at the hospital,” the woman’s nephew Roberto Diaz Verduzco told AFP.
On Monday, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Verduzco had apparent senile dementia and as such could not be tried, while acknowledging “many, many” allegations of abuse perpetrated by her, mainly beatings.
The elder Verduzco, who is about to turn 80, founded the home, known as “La Gran Familia,” in the western town of Zamora, more than 60 years ago.
Police raided the shelter last week amid reports that five kidnapped children were being held there.
They found those children and much more: 400 minors and 200 adults living among piles of rotting food and other fetid trash, as well as horror stories about sleeping amid rats and insects — and even being forced to perform oral sex on adults.
Since then prominent Mexicans have rushed to the defense of Verduzco, including former president Vicente Fox.
An open letter signed by leading intellectuals demanded recognition for Verduzco’s work helping children over the years.
Mexico’s “circus wars” are heating up, with a growing movement to ban circus animals meeting rising anger from circus workers.
There have been messages posted on social networking sites urging people to attack circuses, Armando Cedeno, the head of the nation’s circus owners association, said at a demonstration by circus performers Tuesday.
“We have a lot of threats on Facebook, with environmentalists urging people to go burn down circuses, which is very worrisome,” Cedeno said as he oversaw a protest in Mexico City’s main square at which circus entertainers put on a free show with horses and dogs — the only animals they will be allowed to use under a new city law banning acts with lions, tigers, elephants and other “wild” animals.
Aguascalientes state legislator Gilberto Gutierrez, a member of Mexico’s Green party, said violence has already been inflicted by the circus side. He said security guards beat him and other animal rights activists in front of a circus in his state in late June.
“They broke two of my teeth... it was a direct hit,” Gutierrez said. “It was an attack by the circus people, by the security guards they employ.”
The circus claimed the animal activists were blocking the entrance to the circus in Aguascalientes, where it is still legal to perform with exotic animals. Insults flew first, then fists and belts, the circus said.
Gutierrez acknowledged the demonstrators were posted in a narrow, four-foot strip of sidewalk at the entrance, but he insisted nobody was prevented from entering. At least two security personnel were detained in the case.
There have been mutual accusations of illegal acts, including a giraffe set loose to gallop through a suburb of the northern city of Monterrey. Video posted on social media sites showed surprised motorists making quick maneuvers to avoid the galloping giraffe outside the circus grounds, and the Barley Circus accused animal rights activists of opening the pen so the giraffe could escape.
Barley Circus spokesman Isaac Vertiz said: “The giraffe is always let outside in the morning, and the keeper went back inside for a moment to get food” for the giraffe. “In the meantime, within five minutes, somebody went in and opened the pen and let her out.”
Vertiz said someone also spraypainted circus trailers and tried to break into circus vehicles. He said he suspects animal rights activists but conceded he has no proof.
Gutierrez denied animal activists have broken the law. “We will take this issue to its final consequences, without breaking the law,” he said.