The Best Of Celebrities In 2009!
Sep 21, 2009 5:48 pm US/Eastern
The Stripper, The Priest, and The Baby
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PEMBROKE PINES (CBS4) ―
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Father David Dueppen and Beatrice Hernandez
CBS
They met on a Sunday – the Catholic priest and the stripper – at a club called Porky's.
"I was on stage and he walked in," said Beatrice Hernandez. "I really liked him. I thought he was good looking."
Father David Dueppen wasn't dressed in the garments of a priest. Instead of vestments or a collar he wore a Hawaiian shirt and casual slacks. But he certainly didn't hide his higher calling from Beatrice – whose stripper name was Lisa.
"He just said to me he was a priest," Hernandez recalled. "To me it was like a joke because you know in those places you get all kinds of people. Do you think I believed him – no. He opened a tab and then the bartender called me and she said, `Lisa, do you realize who you're sitting with?' And I go no. And she showed me his ID. She said you are sitting there with a Catholic priest. I said, `Oh my god, he's telling me the truth."
Within months they would be dating, starting an on-again, off-again affair that has lasted nearly seven years.
In January she gave birth to a baby girl – Marilyn Epiphany Hernandez.
She told CBS4 News that Dueppen is the father. And she backed up her claim with a paternity test showing that the priest is her baby's daddy with 99.99999 percent accuracy.
But as amazing as a Father being a father may sound, the baby is the least interesting part of this story.
Instead it is the affair itself between a man of the cloth and a woman who wears none, that is so fascinating. On the first night they met, she claims they ended up in the VIP room where Beatrice said he spent close to $1,800.
And soon after they began dating he was transferred to a new parish on Miami Beach – St. Francis de Sales – where they started living together.
If St. Francis-Sales sounds familiar it's with good reason. It was also the church of Father Alberto Cutie – whose steamy affair with a woman was captured earlier this year in tabloid photos.
But while Cutie's romance seemed more like a love story, ending with a fairy tale wedding, the affair between Beatrice Hernandez and Father Dueppen was sordid from the start.
Hernandez was still married when they met – a fact well-known to the priest.
"He paid for my divorce," said Hernandez.
The longer they were together, the stranger Dueppen's request became.
"He was telling me that I had evil spirits with me and that I needed his help big time," she recalled. "He said we're going to have to go to a place where they can take those evil spirits from you. I said, `What do you mean.' And he said, `A swingers club.'"
What would a swinger's club have to do with excising her evil spirits?
"He said, `The only way the spirits are going to leave you is if you get involved with women.' I said, `David I'm not into women. I've never been there and I don't like that. I'm really serious with you. I feel something very special for you, especially with you being a priest and I've been raised Catholic. I feel something very special for you so why do we have to go there?' "
He then pressured her to go to a nudist colony in Palm Beach. She grew so uncomfortable that she realized she needed to leave him.
In 2005 she separated from Father Dueppen and threatened to sue the church.
The Archdiocese of Miami quietly settled the case. She said she received $100,000.
A spokeswoman for the church confirmed Friday a payment was made to Hernandez. "There was a relationship that was an inappropriate relationship between Ms. Hernandez and Father Dueppen," said diocese spokeswoman Mary Ross Agosta.
After taking some time off for reflection, Father Dueppen was transferred to a new parish in Broward. Beatrice resumed her life.
"I went back stripping and my friends would tell me this Catholic priest was looking for you," she said. "He was going to Stir Crazy, Pink Pony, you name it he knows all the strip joints in town. So he was looking for me everywhere."
Last year he found her.
She was depressed and lonely. She said a good friend had just committed suicide and Father Dueppen offered to comfort her.
"He said he missed me, he loves me, he said, `You know what, I want to start fresh with you.' He said, `I want to have kids with you.'"
They began their affair anew. And in April 2008 she became pregnant.
"He didn't say, `Oh my god congratulations.' After he is asking for a child, he was like speechless. instead of saying, `Really honey, I love you. Good I'm happy. Congratulations.' He was just speechless and freaking out.
He moved her to a condo on Brickell.
"He didn't want anybody to see me because I was getting bigger and bigger," she said, "and he didn't want any of my friends to know what was going on."
He tried to talk her into giving the baby up for adoption. Other times he would deny the baby was his.
"The whole nine months he made it miserable for me," she said. "It was very scary. I didn't know what to do. I cried day and night."
And when it was time for her to go to the hospital for a C-section – Dueppen was busy celebrating a mass.
"I got up and I drove to the hospital myself," she recalled. "And I was very upset, you know with my bag, all alone without David, without any support or anything."
Marilyn Epiphany Hernandez was born on January 27 at South Miami Hospital weighing nine and a half pounds.
She said she named the baby after Dueppen's mother.
"Every day was getting worse and worse and worse," she said. "I started seeing that David didn't want the child, the baby, and for three months in a row I was crying day and night because I didn't know what to do."
She demanded he take a DNA test so that she would have proof he was the father. When he initially refused, she threatened to show up at his church with the baby. He finally agreed.
In court papers she filed earlier this month, Beatrice claimed their arguments would turn violent and that Dueppen was "grabbing her by the throat and choking her."
"I thought he was really going to take my tongue out," she said. "He got very violent with me on that, choking me."
She said she is afraid Dueppen will try to take her baby from her.
"The best thing out of all of this is I've been blessed with Marilyn," she said.
Father Dueppen is currently on leave from his latest parish in Pembroke Pines. According to the diocese, he met with Archbishop John Favalora and asked for some time off for "personal reasons."
The Miami Archdiocese released a statement, saying:
In 2006, the Archdiocese of Miami became aware, through an attorney, that Fr. David Dueppen had an alleged breach of a fiduciary relationship with a woman.
Upon learning of this, Archbishop Favalora removed Father Dueppen from parish ministry and directed him to a13- month leave of absence during which Father Dueppen received professional and spiritual assistance, including his obligation to live faithfully the celibate life and all other aspects of the moral life.
With a favorable professional report and a renewed assurance by Father Dueppen that he was capable and willing to live the celibate life, he was reassigned to a parish in 2007 but not with the responsibilities of a pastor.
The latest revelations were unknown to Archbishop Favalora until mid-August at which time Father Dueppen was given a leave of absence and prohibited from functioning publicly as a priest.
Archbishop Favalora renews his call to all priests to live faithfully the promises freely embraced at their ordination, including that of celibacy for the sake of the Kingdom of God. He also affirms those many, many priests who are faithful to their solemn obligations and who strive ahead without recognition by the secular media.
CBS4 News went to Father Dueppen's house and left messages for him with no success.
On Friday, he told the Miami Herald he was being advised not to speak. He would only say there were "a lot of inaccuracies" in Beatrice's version of events.
This Thursday, Beatrice Hernandez will go to court to ask for a permanent restraining order against Father Dueppen. She will also be seeking child support.
And the 43-year-old Hernandez has her own court date coming up.
In July she was arrested by Miami Beach Police on the misdemeanor stalking charge for allegedly harassing a woman she claims is Father Dueppen's new girlfriend.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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