Alberto Salcedo Ramos, in a file image.
The Colombian writer and chronicler Alberto Salcedo appears criminally involved since Thursday in a case for the crime of violent sexual act.
The women who reported him to justice, Angie Castellanos and Alejandra Omaña, were journalism students when, according to their accounts, Salcedo kissed and forcibly touched them.
Their testimonies and those of five other victims were revealed on the
Las Igualadas
YouTube channel of
the newspaper El Espectador.
“He was 48 years old and I was 21. One day, with the excuse that the place where we would go to have coffee was closed, he invited me to his apartment, he knew I had a girlfriend, so I didn't worry and I accepted.
When we got into the elevator he immediately launched into kissing me, he threw his whole body against mine.
There was not even an inch of distance between the two.
I couldn't move.
I remember feeling my body trapped, because it was all over me and he is much bigger than me, ”Angie Castellanos recounted by phone with a broken voice, who took nine years to report because she was afraid.
"I didn't know if they were going to listen to me, I ended up normalizing it and let it go."
Castellanos says that his bond with Salcedo came from admiration: “He told me that I was very special because I had caught his attention in the midst of all his followers.
I was very surprised that a person as prestigious as him, with 5,000 followers for writing chronicles, wanted to talk to me ”.
Alberto Salcedo, 57, has thousands of followers on social networks and has been recognized with several awards, such as the Ortega y Gasset, King of Spain and several times with the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award, the most important in Colombia .
His chronicles have been translated into several languages and he is one of the star workshops at journalism meetings in the region.
“There is enough evidence to show the power he represented.
He was famous, older than them, and he used his strength and power to kiss and touch them.
There is a pattern that is repeated with all the victims, ”says Viviana Bohórquez, one of the lawyers accompanying the process, who already has a prosecutor appointed by the Colombian justice.
With Alejandra Omaña, a porn actress known as Amaranta Hank, the journalist acted the same as with Castellanos.
Omaña says that he invited her for a drink, then took her to his apartment, cornered her, pressed her against his body, and forcefully kissed her.
He had met her at a literary event where she, through her work in a publishing house, had to accompany writers, among them, Salcedo.
“Before we had spoken on Facebook, he congratulated me because I was writing at that time for Soho magazine, he told me that we were colleagues and that he would always help me with writing if we were in contact.
We talked for a few days and I sent him little stories and stories that I wrote, he read them and told me that surely in a while I was going to be a great journalist ”.
In the testimonies revealed by
Las Igualadas,
all the victims agree that Alberto Salcedo met them in academic spaces, searched for them on social networks and harassed them with messages - at first about journalism, then about their fantasies.
"I would like to kiss you more than that night, without forcing anything, just enjoying it both, kissing and caressing you," reads one of the messages that the writer sent to Castellanos after the night that she recounted in the complaint, known by this diary.
In the responses to their messages, the victims tried to distance themselves.
In one of the first conversations with Castellanos, he tells her that he is attracted to him and that his profile picture "unsettles" him.
She kindly thanks and sends him an
emoji
.
"When we entered the apartment, he immediately took my hands by force and began to rub them on his pants," says Amaranta Hank in the complaint.
"I had wanted to talk for a long time but I was afraid to do it alone, when I found out that others had gone through the same thing, I decided to do it, I couldn't keep quiet, Alberto Salcedo's behavior is an open secret," she says.
A few hours after the complaint was known, more women reported on Twitter having suffered harassment from the writer.
EL PAÍS consulted the journalist to find out his response to the accusations against him, but he limited himself to pointing out, in a written message, that he has put the matter in the hands of lawyers and that, for now, he will not publicly pronounce on the case.