Asuncion, April 21 (Inditop) A week after Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo admitted to fathering a illegitimate child while he was a Catholic bishop, another woman claimed that she had a child from the head of the country.
“What I want is that this gentleman acknowledge my son, that’s all I ask. I will wait one day for him, and if he doesn’t take responsibility, tomorrow I will file a complaint,” Benigna Leguizamon told reporters.
Lugo, 57, admitted last week that he fathered an illegitimate child, who is now 2 years old, following a legal complaint filed by the boy’s mother. The latest claim refers to a boy who is now 6.
“The only proof I’ll have will be the DNA, because I’m mad at him (Lugo) and I burned all the photos of us together,” Leguizamon said.
The 27-year-old woman, who has three other children, said in a statement published in the Ultima Hora newspaper that the head of state is the father of her second child, born Sep 9, 2002, in a district of San Pedro province, where Lugo was serving as a bishop.
“I’m of humble origins and I’m not ashamed. I work selling detergent to put food on the table for my kids, now that my present husband is sick. It’s not right that a child of the current president should live in such need,” the woman said in a poor dwelling in Ciudad del Este.
“I went to Monsignor Fernando Lugo because the father of my first child, Francisco Lujan Correa, who was working as an anaesthetist in San Pedro Hospital, refused to give me child support,” the woman said.
“At that time, the monsignor gave me his support, but took advantage of my great need and induced me to have relations. In a year I got pregnant by him. A midwife delivered my baby in the same house where I was living, whose rent he paid,” she said.
Leguizamon also recalled that during the campaign before last year’s elections she was offered money to publicise her story, but she refused to do so. Now she made it public following the case of Viviana Carrillo, 26, who this month filed a paternity suit against Lugo.
The president, who served as a bishop till 2007, renounced the priesthood to enter fully into politics.
Meanwhile, Gloria Rubin, the minister for women’s issues, said she will take the case of Leguizamon seriously and threatened to resign if there is any lack of transparency in the judicial procedures.
Rubin, who met Monday with Lugo together with other women in his Cabinet, said that they are waiting for the head of state to undergo a DNA test or that he reach out to the woman to solve the case.
Many government officials believe the allegations against the president were part of a campaign to damage Lugo’s reputation.
