A second man has accused former Santa Fe mayor Louis Montaño of child sexual abuse in a lawsuit filed Tuesday against the Santa Fe Boys & Girls Club. Montaño was the director of the youth organization, then called the Boys Club of Santa Fe, when the alleged abuse took place.
The suit, filed on behalf of an unnamed plaintiff, alleges that Montaño groomed and sexually molested the boy from about 1975 to 1981, a year before Montaño was elected mayor of Santa Fe.
Attorney Levi Monagle filed the lawsuit, as well as a similar one that named Montaño in April 2019. He says he’s since heard from multiple other people who say they were victimized by Montaño.
“If what we’re hearing from all these folks in the community is sort of an open secret," said Monagle, "then the fact that being politically connected can render abusive conduct an open secret is pretty disturbing.”
Montaño, who died in 2008, also served two terms on the Santa Fe City Council. The court filing claims that he was "part of a network of child predators operating in the Santa Fe area in the 1970s and 1980s."
The lawsuit accuses the Boys & Girls Club of America, and its Santa Fe chapter, of negligence, and seeks compensation for damages inflicted on the plaintiff.
The AP reports there have been more than 20 cases involving claims of sexual abuse at Boys & Girls’ club chapters across the county.
******
Support for KUNM’s Public Health New Mexico project comes from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the McCune Charitable Foundation, and from KUNM listeners like you.
