“Help, we are facing a psychopath, a serial stalker.
It's real," Angie Téllez, a journalist from CityTv, a local television channel in Bogotá, posted on X - formerly Twitter.
She then detailed how a man named Álvaro Enrique Gutiérrez Colobón has been harassing her since June of last year, sending her videos in which he appears naked and masturbates while mentioning her name.
Several more women responded to the public complaint, who have also reported having been victims of Gutiérrez.
Among them, Estefanía Maldonado, Deisy Nivia and a third who has kept her name confidential.
They are all your colleagues and work in the same channel.
According to the women, the subject's behavior follows a pattern: he writes to them on social networks, sends them pornographic content without consent and, when they reject or block him, he creates new accounts or changes to other telephone numbers to continue the harassment.
In the different numbers that have been communicated, she has the name “You are mine”,
and
On the social network Facebook there are five accounts with the same photos and the same name.
In addition to the journalists, other users of the platform maintain that the subject has attacked them.
Screenshot of Álvaro Gutiérrez's non-consensual messages to journalist Estefanía MaldonadoCourtesy
Gutiérrez has faced criminal investigations before.
According to the official databases of the Judicial Branch, in 2017 he was reported for the crime of using or facilitating media to offer sexual services to minors without resources, for which he was captured in September of that year.
The Prosecutor's Office managed to quickly accuse him and in September 2018 he was already on trial.
But the process had delays and Gutiérrez was finally free.
Already in June 2020 Nirvana Camila Torres, one of the complainants, explained to the station W Radio that it was imminent that the terms would expire, which implied that Gutiérrez would be released from prison.
In addition, he warned about the reaction of the authorities: "I call for the negligence of Mr. Roberto Quintero, because in the oral trial hearing witnesses and evidence were going to be included, and I cannot because he forgot to do so in the preparatory hearing,” he said, referring to the prosecutor in the case.
Finally, in January 2021 the judge acquitted Gutiérrez, a decision that was confirmed by the Superior Court of Bogotá in June 2022.
Beyond the process, Torres narrated the harassment he suffered, very similar to that of Téllez: “In 2017, messages with explicit sexual content began to arrive on my Facebook.
No matter how many users I blocked, he created others.
"He started making photomontages with my photos, threatening me."
In the same interview, Torres said that the stranger showed him sexual recordings of him with minors.
Téllez, who reported the new harassment, has said that he has been waiting seven months for the Prosecutor's Office to process his complaint, to which that entity responded publicly, once the case went viral, that the complainant did not attend the appointment to expand his signs.
“In June I made the relevant complaint for harassment and attached various evidence and even collected testimonies from other colleagues.
At no time did they ask me to expand the complaint because it had all the arguments,” the journalist responded.
Estefanía Maldonado is another whistleblower and reporter at CityTv.
The woman explains to EL PAÍS that she has suffered Gutiérrez's siege since September 2022 and that, after making it public along with her colleague, she received messages from at least a dozen other possible victims.
Maldonado states that, among the testimonies she received, there is one that dates back almost a decade.
“There is nothing to justify this, these types of acts are not normal.
Nothing justifies what we have experienced.
We hope with all our hearts that justice acts,” she emphasizes.
This is not an isolated case.
Only in harassment of female journalists, a recent complaint shows the seriousness of the situation.
On January 9, Alejandra Murgas, Lucía Fernanda Llanes and Katrina Melguizovski, three presenters on the Caracol Televisión channel, revealed that for months they have been harassed by retired military officer Alfredo Navas Alvis.
They said that the Prosecutor's Office filed their complaints and that the prosecutor in the case did not even appear at the only hearing there was.
Navas continues to besiege them near the channel's offices.
In Colombia, sexual harassment is a crime contemplated since 2008, when Law 1257, against gender violence, created a specific criminal offense that represents one to three years in prison.
The penalty is aggravated, among other things, if minors are involved.
Producing, storing or transmitting pornography with minors carries a maximum penalty of 12 to 20 years in prison, along with million-dollar fines.
Despite the severity of the law and continuous complaints, victims complain of the ineffectiveness of the criminal system.
Maldonado emphasizes this, pointing out that it was only thanks to the dissemination of his testimonies on social networks that he found an agile response.
“How many women are at risk of feminicide, ask for help and don't get it?
“It is a fundamental problem in Colombian justice,” she reflects.
He says that in recent days he has found it necessary to change his work routine and immerse himself fully in the investigation of the case, with the emotional exhaustion that collecting evidence has entailed and observing over and over again the numerous obscene recordings in which Gutiérrez mentions his name.
He has felt fear, he says, even though that is not going to stop his insistence on stopping so many years of injustice and siege.
What to do if you are a victim of sexual harassment?
If you are a victim of any type of gender violence, such as sexual harassment, you can contact the Purple Line in Bogotá for free at the number 018000112137 or write to the WhatsApp number 3007551846.
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