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"I'm afraid they'll hurt me": emails from the Mexican Army reveal dozens of sexual abuses in the institution

2022-10-02T10:40:02.984Z


Internal records of the Sedena portray a hostile environment in which denouncing a military officer for sexual abuse becomes a nightmare. Victims are often ignored, discharged from the Armed Forces or transferred elsewhere


The massive leak of emails from the Army to which EL PAÍS has had access reveals a dark part of the most hermetic public institution in Mexico.

This newspaper has reviewed more than 1,000 files where dozens of sexual abuses committed by superior positions on subordinates and civilians are recorded, sometimes in groups, others with practices of torture, which the Secretariat has recorded over the years, but which it had maintained in secret and with hardly any measures to confront it.

Cases that had not come to light until now and that portray the day-to-day life of the barracks, military hospitals, and the behavior of some of their members sent to rural areas.

The documents found among more than 4.1 million emails also reveal the knowledge of the Ministry of Defense (Sedena) of these complaints in which at least 42 soldiers are involved.

Some of them have received convictions and are in prison, others are under trial, and there are many who have simply been transferred to another detachment.

Some reports record complaints from the complainants for having dismissed those who were encouraged to report cases of sexual abuse and harassment.

The Sedena was consulted by this newspaper about the information leaked from the hacking of its servers, and its response was a brief "we are investigating."

A military formation, during a ceremony on November 20, 2021. Gladys Serrano

The leak of more than six terabytes of internal information from the Army includes complaints that detail the same

modus operandi

of the aggressors, where they often take refuge in the position and the uniform —in cases against civilians— to order the victims to go to a remote, lonely place, where there are no witnesses.

They obey the lieutenant or the captain and are cornered.

According to the testimonies of the victims, in many cases in which they accused their bosses they were threatened with the idea that no one would believe them or, if they were in isolated or remote destinations, they were reminded that they were alone there and the only ones with power were the high command.

In a document from the Secretariat dated November 9, 2021, there are reports of 308 soldiers accused, prosecuted or sentenced for violating human rights.

Of these, 23 are reported for cases of qualified rape or sexual abuse.

Five were sentenced, 10 were prosecuted and for the others, the case was filed.

They refer to investigations dating back to 2009.

Other more recent complaints, to which this newspaper has had access, date from 2021, and implicate health lieutenants from the Military School of Health Officers in the capital, construction engineers from Mexico City, and lower-ranking officials against a 19-year-old civilian in La Paz, Baja California.

This last case relates how three soldiers attacked a boy in that municipality when he was leaving his house and tortured him with a metal tube.

A Navy Rear Admiral stationed in Puerto Peñasco, in the State of Sonora, sent Defense in March of this year a series of reports that had come to him from the State of Chihuahua in which soldiers reported that they had been victims of sexual abuse and harassment by middle and senior managers of the Secretariat.

The compilation includes the story of a woman from the National Guard stationed in Ojinaga, in the State of Chihuahua, who reported that in November 2021 a superior of the Navy, with the position of second master, made an "excessive" demonstration with her when in front of his classmates to supposedly teach a detainee how to inspect.

"He began to check me in an exaggerated way, squeezing my chest with both hands and hurting me," the woman said, "later he passed his hands over the rest of my body,

Women new to the National Guard.

They make a guard in Mexico City. Hector Guerrero

According to the report, that same superior had "forcefully hugged" her when they were alone in the laundry in a previous episode.

The woman also denounced another boss, a captain "who intimidates and is scary", because in March 2021 he sent for her to an office, where she made a pass at him and kissed her by force.

The context that she describes was so tense that it included threats and intimidation by the commanders: “I am afraid that they will hurt me.”

Faced with the possibility that her complaint did not go beyond, she requested a transfer to another place, a measure that is usually applied as a punishment within the Army, requested in this case by the victim to "avoid any retaliation" for daring to raise her voice. .

“Other Navy comrades have filed complaints for other events and against other Sedena personnel without success,

That compilation of complaints includes the story of another soldier, who reports around the same time that the Secretariat commanders sexually harassed the workers of a military coordinator in Punta Naranjos, also in the State of Chihuahua.

According to the complainant, the high-ranking officers of the place entered the rooms where the women lived without any care, even when they were naked, and approached them in order to "select the ones they liked."

Those who did not agree to have sexual relations with their bosses, the woman says, were victims of physical and psychological reprisals.

Multiple complaints were recorded from that unit, ranging from discrimination to ill-treatment.

The stories signed with name and surname are repeated with the accusing finger always pointing to high positions.

The bosses excused everything with a phrase: "Now they are going to feel what it is like to be under the command of the Sedena."

A corporal from Punta Naranjos tells in a document dated February of this year that his boss sent for him because a colleague had accused him of sexual harassment and abuse of authority, but the fact did not conclude anything.

"She told me: 'This time I'm going to forgive you, let it be the last time because the next time is a boat, referring to the military prison," he says in the document.

One of the photographs attached to the complaint.

The Secretariat's measures to deal with this type of abuse within the institution go through protocol courses to respect the rights of detained victims, as well as gender workshops, but it has not been found in the documents reviewed, and it has not been announced either. no forceful public policy to stop a dynamic entrenched in the barracks for decades.

In some cases, the person who reports becomes a target for the institution.

Proof of this is a document sent in August 2018 to the Office of Gender Equality of the Army in which the monitoring "by conduct" of a sergeant who was transferred to Chihuahua "because she was the victim of sexual harassment by from your boss."

The report says that for the "neutralization" of the situation, "monitoring of her military and civilian conduct" is maintained, despite the fact that she admits that so far she has not shown "conduct contrary to military discipline."

One of the few measures that the Army seems to have taken is a letter in which its members promise not to harass or violate anyone's human rights.

According to the emails, in June of this year that document that the military must sign began to circulate among the Secretariat's offices, in which they claim to be aware of what attitudes can be considered sexual harassment and promise "not to commit acts of this kind." nature".

From that date, forms signed and sent by soldiers to their superiors are recorded.

Sheet of responsibilities that must be signed by the new members.

Some cases escalated and, after overcoming multiple obstacles, reached the military courts, where the victims had to confront their abusers, in some cases backed by high-ranking military officials.

This is the case of a soldier who had to wait two and a half years and listen in numerous hearings to various Army commanders to deny that a lieutenant and a second lieutenant had sexually abused her in a closet of the Central Military Hospital in Mexico City in July 2018. After being subjected to numerous evaluations, attempts to discredit her and silence her with money, she managed to get them sentenced to the minimum sentence, six years in prison and a fine of 5,300 pesos, about 260 dollars.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-10-02

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