Home The Early Show Presented by: MIAMI, Sept. 21, 2009
Ex-Stripper: Priest Fathered My Baby
Also Claims He Got Abusive; Seeking Child Support and Restraining Order


(CBS)  A woman who worked as a stripper at a club in Miami is suing her on-again-off-again boyfriend, a Catholic priest she says is the father of her nine-month-old daughter. She also contends he physically abused her, and that she was married when he met her.

Beatrice Hernandez, 42, wants child support from Father David Dueppen, also 42. Hernandez has also filed for a restraining order against Dueppen, asserting he choked her when they argued over paternity and child support.

The allegations could prove to be another black eye for the archdiocese for which popular Miami television priest Alberto Cutié worked. In May, he admitted having had an affair with a woman, whom he quickly married.

Dueppen once served at the same Miami Beach parish as Cutié, and is now on leave from his associate priest position at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Pembroke Pines, Fla., according to The Miami Herald, which says Hernandez produced DNA tests results naming Dueppen as the child's father.

The former Miami-Dade middle-school teacher became a priest 10 years ago, the Herald says, adding Dueppen told the newspaper his lawyer advised him not to comment. But, says the Herald, Dueppen did claim Hernandez's version of events is "going to have a lot of inaccuracies."

Hernandez alleges she met Dueppen seven years ago while she was on the job - at a Miami strip club called Porky's.

"It was a Sunday," Hernandez told CBS News. "I was on stage, and he walked in."

She says he spent $1,800 on her in the VIP room that night.

Soon, they were living together.

"I was still married; in fact, he paid for my divorce!" Hernandez says.

But their strange love story soon turned sour.

Hernandez claims Dueppen urged her to exorcise her demons with sex –– at swingers' clubs.

The two separated in 2005. She sued the church, and the archdiocese it settled the suit, reportedly for $100,000.

Hernandez returned to stripping. And, she says, Dueppen returned to her.

In April 2008, she became pregnant. First, says Hernandez, he denied paternity, then demanded she give up the child for adoption. Then, she contends, he turned violent.

"I thought he was really going to take my tongue out," she told CBS News. "He got very violent with me ... choking me."

Hernandez told "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith, "It was something very special, very incredible what was going on in that moment," when she and Dueppen first met. "The way he was expressing himself to me, it was completely something completely different from where I was."

Eventually, she admitted to Smith, she fell in love with Dueppen.

After their separation and reconciliation, when she got pregnant, "He doesn't like that at all," Hernandez says. "He wants to hide the baby; he doesn't want nobody to know about this at all."

Her lawyer, Michael Feiler, told Smith he's "seen the paternity results, and they will certainly be a matter of public report very shortly. I don't think there's going to be any question that Father Dueppen is the father of Marilyn Hernandez (Beatrice's daughter)."

Feiler says the archdiocese hasn't responded "whatsoever" to Hernandez about the latest developments. "We're going to see them in court (later this week), and we'll see where things go from there."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/21/earlyshow/main5326982.shtml

Pic at link

From the pic she would starve to death as a stripper.