‘Shaman’ accused of sexual assaults
Police say downtown shopkeeper lured tourists to backroom for ‘healings’
Tucked away in a small retail complex on Don Gaspar Avenue, Mexican Curios beckons customers with its turquoise door, hand-painted sign and strings of colorful papel picado.
Inside is a jumble of odds and ends, handmade jewelry and ceramics.
A sign above the counter reads, “Shaman,” suggesting this is no ordinary curio shop.
One day earlier this month, a visitor from out of town meandered into the quirky store with her mother and cousin. The man running the store complimented the woman, telling her she had good energy, and offered her a healing energy session. Curious, she told Santa Fe police, she followed the man past the shaman sign and through a door to a backroom, where he asked her to close her eyes and chanted as he caressed her hands with objects that felt like rocks and feathers.
She was standing in the doorway, within view of her mother and cousin, the woman said. But the medicine man nudged her out of their sight. She heard the sound of a zipper, she said, and then the man grabbed her hands and rubbed them against his genitals.
The woman’s report, detailed in a criminal complaint accusing Ricardo Perzabal-Ibanez of sexual assault, is among a series of allegations against the man by tourists who have visited his store in the past year. On Tuesday,
Santa Fe police arrested Perzabal-Ibanez, 60, on charges of criminal sexual contact, accusing him of groping an undercover female officer posing as a patron in a sting operation. A legal U.S. resident from Mexico, Perzabal-Ibanez has no prior criminal history in New Mexico but was acquitted in 2003 of the highprofile murder of a teen girl in Ciudad Juárez, police confirmed Wednesday.
The complaint, filed Tuesday in Santa Fe County Magistrate Court, lists three separate reports — dated Sept. 11, 2018, July 15, 2018, and Aug. 8, 2017 — by women from out of town alleging they were sexually assaulted by PerzabalIbanez during so-called healing sessions in the store, which city records show is owned by his wife, 59-year-old Cynthia Perzabal. Two of the women even paid Perzabal-Ibanez for the session before fleeing the store, the complaint says.
The women ranged in age from 35 to 60, Santa Fe police Lt. Paul Joye said. Only one of them pursued charges.
The department has reason to believe there are more incidents involving Perzabal-Ibanez that have not yet been reported, Joy added.
“We’re hoping with the attention they’ll come forward,” he said. “We’re hoping the others who have reported will be willing to work with us to move on charges in their situations.”
According to the criminal complaint, one woman told police Perzabal-Ibanez lured her into a backroom healing session after he claimed she couldn’t bear children without his help. During the incident, she said, he groped her breasts, pulled down her pants and touched her genitals. She started crying and tried to leave the shop, she told police, but Perzabal-Ibanez refused to let her go without paying him; he charged her credit card $20.
Another woman told officers she had gone to the shop seeking a healing session. But as her eyes were closed, she said, Perzabal-Ibanez unzipped his pants and pulled her hands onto his genitals. When he left the room to tend to a customer, the woman texted her husband, asking him to come to her aid, the criminal complaint says, and before Perzabal-Ibanez could do an “extra treatment” that he said required her to lie down shirtless, her husband arrived.
She paid Perzabal-Ibanez $100, the woman told police.
Officer Jacqueline Rowell took the report of the woman who accused Perzabal-Ibanez of assaulting her Sept. 11. The incident prompted a case review that brought up the other two reports, she said in the criminal complaint.
Officers then devised an unusual sting operation — the first of its kind for the department, Joye said — using Rowell as bait to investigate the women’s claims.
She wanted to see the case through, he said.
“[Officers] made the determination that this was going to be their best chance of proving or disproving these allegations,” Joye said. “It was unfortunately successful.”
The plan was for Rowell to enter the shop and accept a healing treatment from Perzabal-Ibanez while secretly on the phone with other officers. If his behavior became inappropriate, she was to say the word “plaza,” and the officers would move into the store.
Within five minutes, Joye said, Rowell gave the signal for the arrest team.
According to Rowell’s report, PerzabalIbanez approached her as she browsed the shop’s merchandise. He showed her a bracelet and placed it on her wrist. “He told me I had a good energy,” she said. He asked if she knew about chakras, she said, and then put his hands on her shoulders and led her to the backroom.
During the session, she said, he told her to close her eyes and hold her hands, palms up, in front of her. He whispered a mantra and pushed her chin up, and he stroked feathers and smooth rocks on her palms. He started massaging her, she said in the complaint, and pressed his groin against her buttocks. He grabbed her hands and tried to pull them toward his genitals, she said, and then tried to undo her zipper. That’s when she said, “Plaza.”
“It’s a scary situation,” Joye said of the alleged assaults.
Cynthia Perzabal, in an interview Wednesday, said she was in shock over her husband’s arrest.
“I’m totally devastated that this happened,” she said.
The couple met in Mexico and have been married for 30 years, she said, adding they have a 12-year-old daughter.
They’ve owned Mexican Curios since early 2017, she said.
“It’s really upsetting,” she said of the sexual assault allegations. “Just the idea, you know, because he was a person that didn’t have bad intentions.”
Perzabal-Ibanez and his wife gained international attention in 2003 when they were charged with killing a teen in Juárez. They were jailed for 18 months, according to several news outlets, but eventually were found not guilty of the crime.
According to a report in the Chicago Tribune, the couple — who then went by the names Ulises Perzabal and Cynthia Kiecker — had a shop in Chihuahua where they sold jewelry and “counterculture” items when they were accused of killing a 16-year-old girl at a time when many young women were vanishing in Juárez and authorities were facing pressure to solve the cases. The couple claimed police had tortured them into giving false confessions.