Sexual abuse in a Miramar campsite: three young people on trial with a popular jury

Guillermo Villarreal

09/14/2021 6:01 AM

• Clarín.com

• Society

Updated 9/14/2021 8:55 AM

The neighbors will be chosen to make up the jury, the opening statements will be pronounced and each party will present and substantiate their evidence.

Then there will be closing arguments and verdict, all in four days to try three young friends accused of having sexually abused a 14-year-old girl, one New Year's Eve at a Miramar campsite, a case that shocked the country.

The oral debate will begin in the morning of this Tuesday and will take place in the Auditorium theater room, in Mar del Plata, for reasons of space and sanitary protocol;

The public or the press will not have access and, by disposition of the Justice, the experts and witnesses proposed by the defense of the accused will

not be able to refer "to the aspects that make to the intimate life of the victim

."

The head of the Oral Criminal Court No. 3, Fabián Riquert, who will preside over the debate, also rejected that new psychological, psychiatric and socio-environmental examinations be carried out on the minor, who at the time of the event was 14 years old.

In that resolution - which arose at the hearing in which the parties presented the evidence they will use in the process - the judge explained that it was based on the guidelines assumed by the Argentine State through international conventions "in the prosecution and prosecution of crimes against sexual integrity and when the victim is a minor ".

Riquert argued that "

any new intervention on the victim should be rejected since re-victimization should be avoided

."

The transfer of the detainees when the case happened.

File

Two weeks ago, the judge agreed to a request from the lawyer who defends the victim, an unusual request but with valid grounds.

Maximiliano Orsini requested that the three defendants, Tomás Jaime (24), Lucas Pitman (22) and Juan Cruz Villalba (24), be released from prison.

Thus, the three waited the days of debate in freedom, although they were not imprisoned in a prison.

They had been benefited with house arrest.

What modified this decision is that, from the moment of their release, they stopped computing sentences in advance.

"They spent three years in partial freedom, going to work because they had been authorized, and even if there was a conviction, after appealing, they would have continued to compute a sentence," Orsini told

Clarín

.

Jaime, Pitman and Villalba come to trial accused of the crime of "

sexual abuse with aggravated carnal access

."

They are accused of having raped the girl at dawn on January 1, 2019, in a tent at the "El Durazno" campsite, located on Route 11 shortly before entering Miramar, where she had gone to celebrate New Years.

That morning, after the festivities, the teenager's parents denounced that a group of young people had abused their daughter, who had been found semi unconscious inside an igloo tent. 

The place where families camped.

"El Durazno" is a family campsite, recognized in the area, with a swimming pool, trees and meters from the sea, it has camping pitches and bungalows.

There were five of them young.

They had gone in the Renault Trafic van belonging to one of them, and with her they set up their tent. 

The victim's family had rented a bungalow.

It was their first time at the campsite, the first also that they chose to spend the New Year's party outside their home and they did it with a family friend.

They had dinner and after the toast and the after-dinner, they said goodbye and went to sleep.

In the middle of the morning, the mother of the teenager discovered that her daughter had not returned to the bungalow, went out in search of her and soon found her.

The girl was in the youth igloo.

There were very tense moments, the girl's father ended up calling the Police and the five boys were arrested.

But three come to trial;

two of them were acquitted nine months later for lack of evidence.

All in freedom

In principle, they were housed in the Penal Unit 44 of Batán and a little over four months later, on May 3,

they were granted the benefit of house arrest with electronic monitoring

. 

The modality of trial by jury was requested by the defenses of the three defendants, who are represented by the lawyers Martín Bernat, Noelia Agüero and Marcelo Jiménez.

The abused girl's lawyer had rejected this possibility and demanded through a claim of unconstitutionality that the case be resolved in a common oral trial, but the claim was rejected by the judge.

"The defendants chose that it be a trial by jury to try to take some social prejudice," said Orsini, adding: "

They understand that the minor is guilty and they are looking for society to agree with them

."

One of the protests held in 2019. Archive

The juries will be twelve, plus six substitutes.

They will be elected in the morning;

at two in the afternoon the debate will begin with the opening remarks.

The prosecutor Florencia Salas, who instructed the case, assumed the ownership of the Prosecutor's Office of Instruction No. 1 and will not be at the trial.

Prosecutors Ana Caro and Guillermo Nicora will do it then. 

When they were investigated by the prosecutor Salas,

the detainees denied that it was a violation

.

The crime against them includes a penalty of up to 20 years in prison;

those who defend them go for their acquittal.

The verdict will be known next Friday.

EMJ

Look also

Abuse at the Miramar campsite: two weeks after the trial, the three defendants are released

He was convicted of raping a girl for years, but will not go to prison for delays in the judicial process