Constitutional Court Protects the Rights of a Woman Who Was a Victim of Sexual Abuse in State Hospital

The Constitutional Court announced this Thursday, April 7, the determination to protect the rights of a woman who was denied admission of a claim for direct reparation for having been a victim of sexual abuse in a state hospital. The high court ordered that his lawsuit be admitted after the conviction against the perpetrator, handed down in 2017, was overturned.

The events occurred in July 2012, when the citizen was sexually abused by an emergency doctor in a hospital in Dosquebradas in Risaralda. Despite the fact that during the criminal proceedings in the first instance the doctor was acquitted, the High Court of Pereira later convicted him, and the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice rejected the application for Cassation, and the decision was therefore enforceable in November 2017.

The victim then filed a claim for direct reparation against the department of Risaralda and against the hospital, but an administrative judge in Pereira rejected it on the grounds that the phenomenon of expiration was operating.

In view of this, the Ninth Review Chamber stated that, “in order to determine administrative responsibility, it was necessary that the doctor had been criminally convicted, so that a timely interpretation could not be made of the rule that speaks of two years to declare the lapse counted from the moment the events occurred”.

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The Chamber of the Court emphasized that, “the judicial authorities could have accepted an interpretation of article 164 of the CPACA more in line with a constitutional approach based on the safeguarding of fundamental rights and, above all, taking into account the very special circumstances surrounding the specific case”.

“It was not enough with the abuse and sexual abuse that the victim had to endure, nor the consequences that this episode left on her, but she also had to undergo the delays and ritualities typical of the criminal process, in which she clearly had to expose herself to public scrutiny and remember understandably unbearable passages of the situation to which she was subjected as a result of rape”, the Constitutional Court pointed out.

It should be noted that the appointed physician is Jorge Eduardo Chavarriaga Quiceno, who was captured in Manizales at the end of 2016, after several months of being a fugitive from justice. According to the Attorney General's Office, he was charged with the charges of abusive carnal access to a person unable to resist.

The investigation by the investigating body indicated that when the victim went to medical emergencies, she was referred to Chavarriaga Quiceno, who, according to the evidence that supported the investigation and the court's ruling, took advantage of the patient's state of weakness who was under the influence of a drug and abused her in a office.

The sentencing took into account the woman's state of health, who did not allow her to react to the attack, they found traces of semen on her clothes and it was considered that her testimony was truthful, as well as that of another woman who went to the same doctor and he hinted at her and touched her legs.

The High Court recalled that the Constitution and the international human rights framework to which the Colombian State has committed itself provide special protection to women, especially those who have been victims of sexual violence. In this judgment, an administrative judge of Pereira was ordered, who has 20 days to rule on the admission of the complaint filed.

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