They acquitted three young people accused of gang raping a teenage girl in Chubut

A court in Chubut acquitted this Saturday the three young men who had come to trial accused of sexual abuse of a teenage girl in the city of Puerto Madryn, in 2012 . Judges Ana Karina Breckle, Marcela Alejandra Pérez and Maria Laura Martini considered that there was insufficient evidence and granted the defendants the benefit of the principle of innocence.

In the midst of the general secrecy, the sentence was announced at noon today by the complainant lawyer, Verónica Heredia, who described the ruling as “unusual and biased, because for 10 years the truth was known and known in Puerto Madryn, with a victim who is a survivor of the mistreatment she received”.

“The victim was mistreated when she came to offer her last words, so today's result is not surprising,” the lawyer added in an impromptu press conference in front of the court office in Rawson. And he said that he will appeal the resolution “in all instances”.

Luciano Mallemaci, Exequiel Quintana and Leandro del Villar had come to trial accused of gravely outrageous sexual abuse with carnal access aggravated by the participation of two or more people.

Heredia had requested sentences of between 20 and 25 years for the accused, while the prosecutor's office - which excluded the charge of carnal access - had requested sentences of between 12 and 15 years.

The oral and non-public debate had begun on 24 February under strict reservation at the disposition of the parties and on the express instruction of the Court of Justice of the province. Today the judicial headquarters dawned fenced and guarded by a severe judicial mechanism. Several militants of feminist organizations who waited on the outskirts of the ruling that they later shouted out.

The hearing for the cause of group abuse should have started last year, but successive presentations were postponed.

For the attack, six young people were originally identified at the scene of the abuse (five formally denounced), who acted when the victim was helpless and unconscious, although the others were disaffected from the process for different reasons: two because they were minors at the time of the incident, and the remaining because he managed to prove that he was with his girlfriend in the vicinity, but not at the scene of the abuse.

The case came to light after the victim - who is now 26 years old but at the time of the events was a minor - made his story visible on social networks and was driven by the local feminist group Las Magdalenas.

“It was September 17, 2012, I was 16 years old and it was in Playa Unión,” began the text that the victim posted on Facebook. In capital letters, the letter concludes: “I'M NOT AFRAID, I DON'T SHUT UP ANYMORE”. The defendants were marked with first and last names.

The accusation went viral. The hashtag “#lamanadadeChubut” spread. Rawson's Attorney General Fernando Rivarola initiated the investigation ex officio and urged the young woman to file the complaint that was later investigated by prosecutor Maria Florencia Gomez.

Thus, they requested the formal opening of the investigation after collecting evidence for six months. In that process, they collected the statements of more than 60 witnesses who endorsed the young woman's statement. At the imputation hearing of the case, a feminist collective with family, friends and self-convened social organizations appeared in front of the prosecutor's office: they displayed signs with slogans such as “silence is complicity”, “the pack is the system”, “we are no longer silent” and “your surname does not save you”.

The defendants received signs of repudiation in their homes and, as the days went by, were called “children of money and power”, because of their good economic well-being.

The young woman said in her publication that she had an attempt to commit suicide when she returned to Puerto Madryn from her vacation, that from around the defendants they allegedly wanted to convince her not to report the incident and that because of the harassment she had to move to another city, “as if she had been responsible for the situation”.

“Since that moment I have been on psychological and psychiatric treatment, and thanks to all this time of trying to heal it is that today I feel strong enough to be able to tell my story. Let it be known what kind of people they are, who during all these years continued their lives with impunity, while I have no emotional stability and that is why I am still treated”, closed her public complaint.

Some time after the investigation began, Prosecutor Rivarola remained at the center of the questioning after agreeing with the parties a conviction of simple sexual abuse for the three defendants, something that was rejected by the intervening judge.

The scandal was triggered at that time because in that request, the prosecutor alluded to a “malicious act of sexual relief”. After the reproaches, Rivarola defended himself and said that he had been misunderstood.

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