Mariano Rivera Denies Covering Up a Report of Sex Abuse

Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll look at a lawsuit that accuses Mariano Rivera, the Yankees Hall of Famer, and his wife of covering up the sexual abuse of a minor.

Mariano Rivera, a 17-season closer for the Yankees, and his wife, Clara, were accused in a lawsuit of failing to protect a young girl by reporting sexual abuse that she had endured and that they knew about. The lawsuit was filed in Westchester County, N.Y., on behalf of the girl and her mother, whose identities were concealed for their privacy.

Joseph A. Ruta, the Riveras’ lawyer, strongly denied the allegations in a statement on Thursday.

“Mariano and Clara Rivera do not tolerate child abuse of any kind, and allegations that they knew about or failed to act on reports of child abuse are completely false,” the statement said.

The suit says that the girl was an active member of the Refuge for Hope Church in New Rochelle, N.Y., which the Riveras helped found and where Clara Rivera was a pastor.

In 2018, Clara Rivera advised the girl’s mother that she should send her daughter to a summer internship program operated by a sister church in Gainesville, Fla., called the Ignite Life Center, according to the suit. The Ignite Life Center and Refuge of Hope churches are part of the broader Assemblies of God denomination and organization.

Refuge of Hope paid for the girl to attend the program, and she stayed in a dorm with other children, without parental supervision, the complaint says. The girl, who was about 11 years old at the time, was repeatedly sexually assaulted by an older female camper while she was in the Florida program, the complaint adds.

The girl’s mother became worried for her daughter’s safety after speaking with her and brought her concern to Ms. Rivera, who said she would investigate the matter and respond accordingly, court records say.

According to the complaint, the Riveras flew down to Florida and received information that suggested the girl was being abused but did not report it and “intimidated” the girl into silence to “avoid the potential scandal of child sexual abuse” in the Refuge of Hope programs.

The complaint says the girl was assaulted again later that summer by the same camper during a barbecue for church youths at the Riveras’ home in Rye, N.Y. She was also sexually assaulted several times and forced to engage in explicit communications by another church employee about three years later, the complaint adds.

The suit alleges that neither the church, its employees nor the Riveras did anything to report the abuse or properly investigate it. In December, Assemblies of God affiliates in Florida settled three lawsuits in connection with allegations of sexual assaults of minors, and a former Ignite Life Center staffer also took a plea agreement in a case linked to sexual abuse charges.

Ruta said the Riveras had not learned about the accusations until 2022, when a lawyer in New York sent them a letter requesting a financial settlement, nearly four years after the abuse reportedly occurred. He said the couple had received another letter a year later from a law firm in Florida, again requesting a financial settlement.

“The lawsuit, which seeks financial damages for the Riveras’ alleged failure to act on alleged incidents that were never reported to them, is full of inaccurate and misleading statements which we have no doubt will not hold up in a court of law,” Ruta said.

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Familiar Feeling

Dear Diary:

I started traveling to New York City from my hometown, Toronto, in the early 2000s. I would visit once or twice a year, usually with my children. As they have gotten older, I’ve been making my annual trip solo.

On my most recent trip, in November 2024, I stayed near Lincoln Center. When it was time to leave, the hotel doorman hailed me a taxi to take me to the airport.

After I got into the cab, the driver and I began chatting about the delicious smelling rice and oxtail stew his wife had just dropped off for him. He told me we had spoken previously about Indian and Senegalese food. I must have looked confused because he then claimed that he knew me.

I said that my son’s girlfriend was from India and that she had made us a feast for Diwali the year before. The driver nodded and said I had told him that before.

I had not been to New York in a year and was incredulous that this man could possibly have remembered a random conversation with a passenger from 12 months ago.

Then, suddenly, I remembered him, too. He had told me the last time we spoke that he was sending one of his teenage children to live with his parents for a while so they could get to know one another.

He explained this time that the child was back home and that all had gone well.

After getting out of the cab at the airport, I turned back to him.

“Thank you,” I said. “See you next year!”

— Patricia O’Connell

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.