Martín Pradenas, convicted of seven crimes of sexual connotation, in a file image. RR.SS.
The Chilean justice has sentenced this Friday Martín Pradenas, 31, to 17 years in prison for seven sexual crimes perpetrated against six victims between 2010 and 2019. This case, which has been dragging on for three years, is symbolic in the feminist struggle of the South American country. It started in 2019 with the complaint of rape to Antonia Barra, when she was 21 years old. The young woman committed suicide three weeks after the attack, bringing thousands of women to the streets in search of justice. The Prosecutor's Office and Barra's family asked for 40 years in prison for the "sexual predator."
Pradenas, who has always pleaded not guilty, has been in pretrial detention since mid-2020. Those three years will be deducted from the sentence, so he will serve 14 behind bars. Alejandro Barra, Antonia's father, was against the years of sentence: "The fact that we are not satisfied does not mean that we will suffer more. It is only a remedy that does not calm us totally. And no penalty, neither the 40 nor the 100 years that could be given to the accused, will calm the sadness of having lost our daughter."
The Court of Oral Criminal Trial of Temuco (about 650 kilometers south of Santiago) found him guilty in early July of two crimes of rape of people over 14, four sexual abuses of a person over 14 and another of a girl under 14. That was the resolution of the second trial of the perpetrator, after the Supreme Court accepted last December the appeal for annulment presented by the defense of Pradenas, who accused lack of impartiality on the part of one of the judges. The highest court annulled that trial, in which he had sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Judge José Ignacio Raul Atria maintained at the end of the second trial that the evidence of the victims, witnesses and agent of the Investigative Police was "concordant, consistent, complementary and sufficient." Pradenas will not be able to work for life in educational centers or thatinvolve a direct and habitual relationship with minors.
The regional prosecutor of La Araucanía, Roberto Garrido, said, prior to knowing the sentence, that more "beyond the penalty" they value "the decision of conviction of the court, which implies establishing the facts that were the subject of the accusation and also allows to recognize the truth of the victims. "
The case of Antonia Barra has been a symbol of the feminist struggle in Chile. According to the prosecutor's account, Barra arrived on September 17, 2019, at a nightclub in Pucón, in the southern region of Araucanía. In the compound, Pradenas harassed her for hours and convinced her to leave the place. Among the evidence of the Public Ministry, a video shows her walking with difficulty next to Pradenas. According to the tests, he was intoxicated. The next morning, the victim called crying to the friend with whom she went to the nightclub and told her that Pradenas had locked her in a cabin.
According to the prosecutor, when her friends went to look for her, Barra was very affected and did not tell what happened. On Oct. 12, she told her ex-boyfriend that Pradenas had raped her, according to messages found on her phone. The next day, he said goodbye to the boy, and a few hours later, he took his own life.
In July 2020, the courts ordered only Pradenas to be placed under house arrest, despite requests from the Prosecutor's Office to order preventive detention. The decision brought thousands of women to the streets in different cities of the country. Days after the protests, the Public Ministry revoked the precautionary measure and ordered the preventive detention on the grounds that Pradenas constituted a danger to society. Barra's case prompted other victims of the assailant to tell their testimonies in court.
Since then, Alejandro Barra, father of the victim, together with feminist organizations, have mobilized so that femicidal suicide has criminal prosecution. At the end of 2022, the Antonia Law was enacted, which establishes that the person who "on the occasion of previous acts constituting gender violence, committed by this against the victim, causes the suicide of a woman, will be punished with the penalty of minor imprisonment in its maximum degree to major imprisonment in its minimum degree as the author of feminicidal suicide".