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The death of Saulo Rojas: the first trial in Argentina against an addict rehabilitation farm

2022-08-06T23:42:53.492Z


A worker at the center is charged with the culpable homicide of a 23-year-old who hanged himself after being locked up in a punishment cell


Saulo Rojas with his mother, Miriam Lucero.MR

On Friday, June 14, 2013, Argentinean Miriam Lucero received the worst possible news: her son, Saulo Rojas, had died.

Rojas, 23, had been in a drug addict rehabilitation farm for almost a year.

He died "of a heart attack," they told him by phone from the San Camilo community after 10 p.m.

“I was shocked.

I never would have imagined that something like this would happen because I went there to seek help to protect my son's life,” says Lucero.

It wasn't until later that she found out that Rojas had hanged himself after being locked up without her insulin dose in a punishment cell that she was told was a "reflection room."

Nine years later, she has managed to get the case to court, where for the first time in Argentina a doubtful death that occurred in an institution of this type is judged.

The verdict for culpable homicide against Ángel Súñez, former head of security at San Camilo, will be announced on Monday.

The prosecutor asks for three years in prison for effective compliance and 10 years of disqualification.

His bosses, the director of the institution, Martín Iribarne, and the therapeutic director, Alejandro Jacinto, got rid of the trial in exchange for carrying out community tasks.

“It was a long waiting time, many twists and turns and some judicial decisions that I did not expect, such as the

probation

of Iribarne and Jacinto.

Hopefully some justice will be done for my son.

Nothing is going to change me, ”replies Lucero.

Rojas's mother trusts that the court will issue "an exemplary sentence" on Monday that will help ensure that there are no more similar deaths, although she warns that it will be insufficient unless the State controls that these centers, mostly privately managed, comply current regulations.

Exterior view of the San Camilo rehabilitation farm, on the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Human rights organizations such as the Provincial Memory Commission (CPM) have documented human rights violations perpetrated within them, such as torture, overmedication and forced internment.

Lucero maintains that it was very important, as a step prior to the trial, to achieve the closure of the San Camilo community in 2017. "Yesterday a girl told me: 'Thanks to you and your fight I was able to save myself from that place.'"

According to the CPM, in this rehabilitation farm there were “systematic practices of torture and mistreatment, people illegally deprived of their liberty, systematic and arbitrary isolation measures, abusive use of psychotropic drugs in the framework of the complete absence of an interdisciplinary approach to medical charts”.

The investigative journalist Pablo Galfré, author of the book

La Comunidad.

Trip to the abyss of a rehabilitation farm

, coincides with the diagnosis of the human rights organization.

“San Camilo was worse than a prison.

Unlike the prisoners, who have an execution judge who controls the sentence, whether it is five or 10 years in prison and they know when they are going to be released and when they can ask for a parole, in San Camilo the patients were hospitalized and did not have a date. exit.

I have even interviewed patients who had been hospitalized for three years.

In the trial there was a girl who spent five years, ”he points out.

Galfré adds that some patients from San Camilo were forcibly interned, contrary to the Mental Health Law.

"They went to find addicts at their homes, kidnapped them and took them away," he describes.

Despite the fact that current regulations limit admissions without consent to exceptional and dangerous cases, the CPM confirms that this practice is also repeated in other centers.

"We have revealed cases in which if a person does not want to be hospitalized, they go to the house, give him an injection and take him away," says Roberto Cipriano, secretary of the CPM.

Rojas's family is from Mendoza, a province bordering Chile, but after the failure of different outpatient treatments, they managed to get the State to designate a center for comprehensive treatment.

They did not care that the place was 1,200 kilometers from his house, on the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires.

"He knew that he couldn't get out, but he was convinced," says Lucero.

In the surroundings of Pilar, where San Camilo used to be, there are many therapeutic communities.

“In the Pilar area, in the last eight years there have been 16 deaths that have not been properly investigated,” Cipriano points out.

"This year four people died in a fire in the San Fernando Resilience community who were overmedicated in a place with bars on the windows," says the CPM secretary.

The plaintiff attorney Yamil Castro Bianchi believes that the system of rewards and punishments by which San Camilo was governed kept the patients permanently intimidated.

Rojas could not bear the threat of being transferred to the Del Viso center, with an even stricter regimen than San Camilo.

From the other side of the wall of the punishment cell, a colleague said that he heard Rojas cry and that he was depressed.

In a week he was going to complete a year of hospitalization.

“They took Rojas out of there at eight o'clock to take him to Del Viso, but they locked him up again.

They lock him up with a belt and laces, which are legally prohibited practices due to the self-harm that the patient can inflict on himself.

Although that should not distract from the fact that he could not be locked up, ”says Bianchi.

According to the testimony of patients before the Justice, those responsible for San Camilo ordered that furniture and a bed be installed in the place where Rojas took his life to make it appear that it was a room.

In her statement, prosecutor Valeria Oyola stressed that the horrors of San Camilo should never be repeated.

She requested that the justice investigate the crimes denounced during the testimonials, such as kidnappings, torture, illegitimate deprivation of liberty and sexual abuse, among others.

If this cause prospers, it could give impetus to others.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-08-06

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