Bogotá Mayor's Office and the Prosecutor's Office determine new measures in cases of violence and sexual abuse

The mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López, and the head of the investigating body, Francisco Barbosa, met in the bunker of the Attorney General's Office to take action with regard to the increase in complaints of sexual abuse in the Colombian capital. According to the authorities, it was agreed to strengthen comprehensive care for women, which will now also be to care for children and adolescents who are victims of sexual violence.

“We want to reiterate to parents, to the rectors, to teachers, but especially to the children and adolescents who study in our schools, that we are with them, that we love them, that we care for them, and above all, that we believe them, and that we invite them to continue to tell everything that happens to them,” said the mayor Claudia Lopez.

Prosecutor Barbosa, for his part, said that there will be six new prosecutors and an equal number of investigators, who will be willing in the houses of justice, to give attention to this type of investigation. He also estimated that, of the 154 cases submitted by the District, the first results will be delivered within 30 days.

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Prosecutors, investigators, lawyers from the Secretariat for Women and Officials of the Commissariat of Family, among other officers, will work in a coordinated manner in these houses of justice, in order to be able to determine the opening of the proceedings.

“It is important to say that, in the same way, we are going to join efforts, not only to clarify these sexual crimes, we are also going to work on a computer mechanism to update the databases of the SPOA (Oral Accusatory Criminal System) so that we can have a traceability of specific cases and have permanent answers”, asserted.

The update of the SPOA database, which will be supported by the Mayor's Office of Bogotá, will seek to establish whether the alleged case of sexual violence occurred at the victim's home, at school or in a school setting.

Claudia López pointed out that, “we do not hesitate at some point in the face of cases of sexual violence and we are very pleased that reports are increasing. So far this year we have in our alert system a total of 659 alerts for possible cases of sexual violence, and each of them has received attention from the teams of the Ministry of Education and in cases where necessary, work has also been done with other institutions; that is why it is important to denunciation, because if there is no complaint, we don't know what happens.”

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The Ministry of Education assured that there is also the creation of an interdisciplinary working team to deal with cases of sexual violence reported in the entity as a matter of priority and taking some measures such as:

- Since 2021, a series of talks on the “care and protection of children, adolescents and young people” has been held in schools aimed at rectors, directors, coordinators and counselors.

- The team of lawyers and psychologists for the Office of Internal Disciplinary Control was strengthened to speed up cases of sexual abuse in schools.

- In the official sector, 200 new school counselors were linked so that children and young people can report.

- During the second half of 2020, the Work Plan was built to optimize the comprehensive management of the District Secretariat of Education in the face of cases of sexual violence against children, adolescents and young people, within the District Educational Institutions.

- With the implementation of the Plan, it has been possible to speed up the procedural times of each case, reducing the time for investigations and improving the response of the entity. Thus, in 11 months, the number of active cases has increased from 211 in April 2021 to 154 in March 2022, of which 47 are open processes in 2021.

- After identifying that in 2020 there was no consolidated comprehensive register of sexual violence proceedings, an information tool was implemented to report, manage and monitor the processes. For the first time, there is a characterization of cases of sexual violence against minors in which public servants of the entity are involved. Work is currently underway to generate a more robust information tool.

- In the cases of teaching and administrative officials involved in these episodes, the most drastic sanctions are being imposed in accordance with the law.

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