Guillermo Villarreal
06/10/2021 2:35 PM
Clarín.com
Society
Updated 06/10/2021 2:35 PM
She called the Federal Police and told of the nightmare in which she was trapped from the moment she arrived in the country:
a man who had contacted her through social networks and promised her a job here,
helped her come from Venezuela, housed her and locked her up at home and, always under threats,
sexually abused her.
In her desperate plea for help
, the 21-year-old had no idea where she was.
The officers urged her to open the maps on her phone, they were able to find the abuser's house and detained him.
When the case was disclosed, another young woman reported that she had gone through the same thing,
until she managed to escape;
it is believed that there may be more victims.
He is a 53-year-old man, an employee of the Municipality of Mar Chiquita and
a handball teacher who was in charge of girls and adolescents.
His identity, by policy of the Public Prosecutor's Office, will not be revealed until the oral trial takes place.
This Thursday the prosecutor Laura Mazzaferri, in charge of Federal Court No. 1 of Mar del Plata,
expanded the accusation against him
and summoned the accused to investigate.
On the advice of his lawyer, the man refused to testify.
In both cases, the accused acted in the same way.
He was the one who
sent the friendship requests on Facebook, promised to help the young women by offering them employment
and for "the recruitment he would have used organizations of illegal trafficking of migrants established in different borders" until he managed to transfer them to his home, in General Pirán, a town located 80 kilometers north of Mar del Plata.
In her statement, the young woman who denounced him last April said that
on her journey from Venezuela she crossed five borders,
spent
11 days by land and even sailed in a precarious boat
, a raft with which she entered Ecuador.
On that risky stretch, he lost all his luggage, but he
managed to keep his cell phone
.
He told his captor that it had been broken when in fact it was unloaded.
The man would go out to work and
lock her up at home
.
He kept her threatened, "there were controlled communications" with the young woman's family and,
every day, he sexually abused her
according to the prosecution's accusation that Judge Santiago Inchausti validated when he issued the trial with preventive detention.
As soon as she got hold of a charger and was able to pick up a signal with her phone, the woman called the Federal Police.
They located the house by geolocation of the device and the prosecution was intervened.
Property was raided and the handball teacher was arrested.
The young woman was hidden under the bed.
The prosecution proved that the defendant paid for the entire trip, deposited 800 dollars to an account in Colombia, then made two transfers of 7,300 pesos when the victim was stranded in Jujuy -he had entered through La Quiaca on March 15-, which
generated him a "debt"
.
The defendant used this "debt" as an element of coercion to ensure the arrival at his house first and to force him, later, to remain there until he
reduced it to a situation analogous to slavery
and forcing a de facto union, sexually abusing each other. the victim in a systematic way.
After the case was reported in the media, after the arrest,
a woman contacted the victim
.
"Look," he wrote in a message, "the same thing happened to me."
It is about
another young Venezuelan
who ended up appearing at the prosecutor's office and denouncing him.
He had also offered her a false job opportunity and helped her get home to Piran.
It was in the first days of November 2018.
He was in the house for a month.
According to Mazzaferri's accusation, the defendant “
deepened the victim's subjection
, since, finding herself alone, isolated, without her own money, without family support, in another country and deceptively delaying the possibility of her accessing a source labor,
the appointed was erected as the only one who could meet their basic needs "
of food, accommodation and clothing."
For this reason, the prosecutor continued, "the accused forced the young woman to have sexual relations, fully aware that the victim was refusing."
In an oversight by her captor,
the woman fled and managed to reach Route 2.
There she found two Buenos Aires police officers, who lent her a telephone.
He did not report it then and managed to travel to Buenos Aires.
The facts of the first case were classified in the prosecution as constituting the
crime of trafficking in persons under the modality of recruitment, transport and reception
aggravated by the abuse of the situation of vulnerability and by having achieved the consummation of exploitation, in real competition with sexual abuse aggravated.
In relation to this crime, Judge Inchausti pointed out that “(the accused) taking advantage of the situation in which he himself placed the victim,
sexually abused her on repeated occasions
.
The threats due to the 'debt' that he had contracted, added to the situation of isolation, confinement and exploitation generated to the victim, made it easier for the accused to commit the crime in question ”.
At the time of issuing the first prosecution, the magistrate noted that "from the doctrine it has been indicated that it is
a crime not only against ambulatory or physical freedom, but also against mental freedom
."
The Federal Prosecutor's Office No. 1 found evidence to believe that
there may be more victims of similar events
, so it made available means of contact.
The mail fisfed1-mdp@mpf.gov.ar, and the telephone number of the Mar del Plata Special Investigations Operational Unit Division of the Argentine Federal Police (0223) 451-1546 (extensions 211, 212 and 214).
ME