This year Costa Ricans have been taken back by sexual abuse scandals that have tainted the reputation of a former President and Nobel Peace prize winner, the Catholic Church (An institution of great weight in the country), and even the literary world.

First it was former two-time president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias Sánchez, who made headlines, after a physician and antinuclear activist filed a criminal complaint against him for events that occurred back in 2014; but this was just the beginning; this first statement gave courage to several other women who also claimed having been victims of sexual assault by the former president. Two journalists, the editor of one of Arias’ books, a former Miss Costa Rica winner, and a political scientist of the University of Nevada, all spoke of the inappropriate and abusive conduct of the former president.

Just a few weeks later it was the Catholic Church, that was put on the eye of the storm, when two priests, Mauricio Víquez and Manuel Guevara were accused of sexual abuse of two minors; Costa Rican authorities conducted a raid in the Episcopal Conference, the administrative organ of the Catholic Church in the country; the Catholic Church apparently had received the first complaints against Víquez back in 2003, and in total there were nine canonical complaints of his sexual misconduct; however, the church did not act until February this year, when they informed that the priest had been separated from the Church. Authorities gathered information that could proof the potential cover-up by Archbishop José Rafael Quirós of San José.

Finally, this past week the scandal reached the literary world, when Costa Rican writer Warren Ulloa was accused by several women of sexual abuse, rape and sexual misconduct. In total, 17 women claim having been victims of the writer, among them, journalists, writers, lawyers, a teacher, a psychologist, a sociologist, to list just a few. Two of the victims were minors when the abuses took place.