Pablo Novillo
12/14/2020 5:41 PM
Clarín.com
Cities
Updated 12/14/2020 5:41 PM
A little over a year after the first instance ruling, the Buenos Aires Justice confirmed the prison sentence against Ricardo Russo, the former pediatrician of the Garrahan hospital, for producing and distributing photos and videos with images of sexual exploitation of minors.
The sentence, to which
Clarín
agreed
, was handed down by Chamber II of the Criminal, Misconduct and Misdemeanor Appeals Chamber of the City.
The court rejected the annulments requested by Russo's defense and ordered that the pediatrician spend
8 and a half years in jail
.
Justice considered proven the fact that Russo, who served as head of Pediatric Rheumatology at Garrahan hospital, downloaded and also produced and broadcast photos and videos with
sexual content of boys and girls under 13 years of age
.
In total, they found 999 digital files, both on a computer he used at Garrahan and on two computers he had at his home in Núñez, where he lived with his wife and two children.
The moment of Russo's arrest, in the Garrahan hospital parking lot.
The images were downloaded and shared online with the eMule program, in a period between February 2018 and May 2019.
But the most serious thing, and what made his sentence greater, was that Russo
took photographs of minors who were his patients
: it happened once in 2017 in an office that the doctor had on Calle Uruguay at 700, and at least three times between 2015 and 2018
within the hospital itself
.
The victims were five girls, all under the age of 13.
In his defense, Russo assured that those photos, which he took with his cell phone, had been taken for medical purposes, but the various witnesses, experts and other doctors who testified in the trial in the first instance (which took place in November 2019) said that those images made no scientific sense.
Ricardo Russo, during the trial.
Maxi Failla
The investigation of the case that ended with the imprisoned pediatrician was carried out by the
Specialized Prosecutor's Unit in Computer Crimes and Contraventions
, in charge of the prosecutor Daniela Dupuy.
It operates within the framework of the General Prosecutor's Office of the City, whose head is Juan Bautista Mahiques.
The sentence came out with a majority ruling.
Judges Pablo Bacigalupo and Fernando Bosch ordered a sentence of 8 and a half years in prison.
In the first instance, the pediatrician had been sentenced to 10 years, an amount that has now been slightly reduced for technical reasons.
The other court judge, José Sáez Capel, also ordered Russo's conviction, although he asked for a 5-year sentence.
Since he was convicted in the first instance, Russo has been detained in the
Ezeiza prison
.
