The Svengali’s fall from grace

People are shocked when they first see Sergio Andrade, the onetime music producer accused of sexually seducing then abusing teenage girls who came to him to become stars. They expect to find a criminal Casanova, a manipulator with irresistible animal magnetism.

Instead, they discover a most unlikely Lothario, a chubby, rumpled and broken figure who has spent the past five years behind bars, facing charges of rape, kidnapping and abuse of minors.

Andrade, once one of Mexico’s most acclaimed and successful record producers, is in a Chihuahua prison awaiting a decision in his case. Meanwhile, his former lover and suspected accomplice in a sex cult, Gloria Trevi, was recently released for lack of evidence and has resumed her career.

Andrade’s prospects appear more grim. Regardless of the legal outcome, public opinion may already have condemned him as the powerful, much older man -- he turns 50 this year -- who should have protected, not exploited, his teenage proteges.

“Gloria Trevi fell into the hands of a monstrous gentleman, a character from a horror movie, an unscrupulous manipulator who used her image for his benefit,” says columnist Guadalupe Loaeza, reflecting a typical sentiment. “This man deformed her, he took away her compass in life and deprived her of the few principles that a girl could have at that age.”

Andrade first worked with Trevi when she was about 16, a fresh recruit for an all-girl band he was launching. By the time they debuted, he had taught them all to play their instruments, displaying a penchant for strict discipline that would eventually escalate to Dickensian cruelty, according to his accusers.

Perhaps subconsciously, Andrade revealed another penchant in picking the band’s name, Boquitas Pintadas (Little Lipsticked Mouths). It’s the title of a 1969 Manuel Puig novel that itself comes from a 1934 tango lyric: “Delicious perfumed creatures, I want the kiss from your little lipsticked mouths.”

Andrade would later be accused of having multiple relationships, and several offspring, with girls as young as 13. One of them was the singer Aline Hernandez, an ex-wife who broke the scandal with a 1998 tell-all book.From the start, however, there were glaring inconsistencies in the case. A key witness, Karina Yapor, at one point publicly recanted, then reinstated her allegations.

Andrade has maintained his innocence, saying the girls were willing partners. Like Trevi, he calls the scandal a smear campaign by TV Azteca, a Mexican network that unsuccessfully tried to woo Trevi away from rival Televisa.

Adding another strange twist to the saga, authorities say Andrade, while in a maximum security prison in Brazil, somehow fathered Trevi’s second child while she too was behind bars. Although Trevi has declined to name the father, the mystery conception only added to the Andrade mystique.

Today, Trevi is among the few who express any sympathy for Andrade. The singer says it’s an injustice for him to spend so many years in prison for what she considers “moral mistakes,” when other men who commit violent rapes are given just a few months in jail.

“I don’t want him anywhere near my life,” says Trevi. “But I don’t think of him with hatred or resentment. I want with all my heart for him to go free.”