Historic sentence against Carmen Sánchez's aggressor: 46 years in prison for attacking a woman with acid in Mexico

It has taken nine years for justice to arrive for Carmen Sánchez, a symbol of acid violence against women in Mexico. Judge María de Jesús Cabrera of the Superior Court of Justice of the State of Mexico has sentenced Efrén García to 46 years and 8 months in prison, the maximum penalty requested by the prosecution, for committing an attempted femicide. This is the first sentence of its kind in Latin America that punishes in an exemplary manner an acid attack on a woman, which sets a very important precedent in the country and the region.

Sanchez was attacked with acid by her ex-partner and father of her daughters. The three complaints that the woman had filed against her aggressor for domestic violence, child abduction and rape mattered little. On February 20, 2014, García arrived at Sánchez's mother's house where she was sheltering with her daughters and threw a bucket of acid on her body. She spent eight months in a hospital recovering from her injuries. The consequences that that attack left in his body and in life could never be erased. To date, Carmen Sánchez has undergone 64 surgeries.

There began an arduous political and judicial battle so that her aggressor was arrested and so that acid attacks against women in Mexico are not considered only a crime of injury – as happens in most of the country – but as attempts at femicide. On May 6, 2021, seven years after his attack, Efrén García was arrested and linked to the crime of attempted femicide.

94% of acid attack cases against women in Mexico are never resolved. The State of Mexico, where Sánchez was attacked, is one of the three entities in the country with the highest incidence of this type of crime.

Sánchez has also been a pioneer in creating in Mexico and Latin America the first foundation for women victims attacked with acid. Through the organization Carmen Sánchez, located in Mexico City, help is provided to other victims who have managed to survive these attacks. Medical, legal and psychological accompaniment is also offered for other women who, like her, have survived an attack of these characteristics.

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