Penelope Canonico
03/09/2021 17:33
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 03/09/2021 17:33
Stories that are repeated with different edges, but under the common denominator of alleged
priests who abuse children and adolescents.
Victims who perhaps break their silence many years later, when a trigger encourages them to start the judicial process and put into words the torments they suffered.
The acquittal of the former priest, Carlos Eduardo José (62), by the Oral Criminal Court No. 2 of San Martín caused pain among those who had denounced him, who were awaiting a conviction due to the legal qualification with which he arrived at the judicial stage.
He was charged with
"gravely outrageous sexual abuse aggravated by holding a church office."
In 2017 Mailin Gobbo denounced the abuses for the first time. She said they occurred from May 1999, when she was 12 years old, to November 2008.
She was a student at
the parochial school
that the priest ran in the Buenos Aires town of Caseros.
In addition, two other victims await the decision of the Buenos Aires Supreme Court to be able to promote their own processes.
Now the priest is free on a legal technicality.
And there is an appeal to the Federal Chamber pending.
Law specialists assured that the judges of the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) No. 2 of San Martín
"lacked a gender perspective."
Since 2015, the moment in which the victim reports a crime against sexual integrity committed against minors under 18 years of age is considered as the starting point.
The reform (introduced by Law 27206) was made to
prevent these crimes from prescribing over time
, since the times of the victims are far from those of the law.
It is the Supreme Court of Justice that must decide
whether this modification in the legislation can be applied retroactively to the case that was debated today in the San Martín Court.
“Lawyers and judges are
accomplices of a pedophile.
I can't believe it, I can't believe it, ”Mailín Gobbo, one of the 4 victims of José, who has been detained since July 2017, told the media disconsolately.
For
Julieta Uñazco
, victim of the priest Héctor Giménez, who met Mailin during his time in the
Campaign Against the Prescription of Sexual Violence Crimes,
the sentence was a very hard blow.
“They are everywhere.
In each cause of this type one is involved as if it were one's own.
They are wicked and have the protection of the judiciary.
We thought they were going to condemn him.
I feel pain for the complainants, but it gives me the strength to continue accompanying them.
We are concerned about the children who will be around him
.
That is our fight ”, he tells
Clarín
.
30 years of silence
Julieta (48) lived more than 30 years under anesthesia, not to mention the sufferings she went through, in the 1980s, during her childhood in the summer camps organized by the Church in the town of Gonet.
“The confessional functioned inside a tent where we lined up to enter one by one.
Once there, he supported us on his body so that we could whisper our sins into his ear.
He took advantage of that moment to touch our private parts.
Many times, he would leave his genitals in the air.
Other times,
he would go into the tent where we rested at night
.
I still have an image in which I see myself lying down and him looking at me from above.
I pretended to be asleep and watched what he was doing with other girls.
There were cases in which he took photos of naked girls and then showed them ”, he describes.
"I could not put it into words because
fear paralyzed me
, blocked memories to survive," he recalls.
Julieta was only 7 years old when the abuses began that lasted until she was 13.
When he turned 18 he tried to put it into words, but it didn't work.
A juvenile judge denied her the search for justice, arguing that as the country was emerging from the dictatorship, it was not convenient to denounce the Church.
And the sequels appeared:
fibromyalgia, depression, low self-esteem
.
But one day he woke up from lethargy.
The birth of his grandson, who is 8 today, was the trigger that allowed him to break the silence
.
“At that moment I felt an excessive fear that was not normal for me.
I cried all day and the memories of everything I suffered in childhood would assail me.
My partner recommended that I do therapy ”, he stresses.
It was 2013 and her abuser was still giving masses.
In the Prosecutor's Office No. 6 of La Plata, it discovered that Giménez had complaints from three men and five women who had also been abused as children.
But in his search, he found more than 50 silenced victims, they did not dare to put it into words.
Giménez was only held in preventive detention for three months and is listed in the registry of sexual abusers in Argentina, according to the complainants.
They sentenced him to eight years, but
the La Plata Appeals Chamber released him for "ecclesiastical dignity."
Now, he lives in a nursing home.
Today, Julieta is a member of a movement called
Iglesias sin abuses and La Plata Unides against sexual abuse in childhood
.
“I did not obtain justice with my cause, but I get it in that of my companions along with those of us who demand that they not prescribe.
It is a difficult road, but things are changing thanks to the struggle of survivors who put the case on their shoulders, ”he emphasizes as he travels to the San Martín Court to show solidarity with the complainants who still demand justice.
ME