The cry for help from a Mexican woman after experiencing an attempted femicide in Colombia: “I fear for my life”

Valeria Casillas refuses to live in fear.

She doesn't want the violence she endured that nearly killed her to define her.

Still bruised, physically and emotionally scarred, she emphasizes that other women are at risk.

She seeks justice, not personal revenge, she stresses.

In December she traveled from her native Mexico to Colombia to spend vacations with the man who had been in a long-distance relationship six months ago.

Jonathan Lynn Wright is a US citizen, 39 years old, resident in Pereira, a city located 300 kilometers west of Bogotá.

Two days after landing, the idyll turned into a nightmare.

Casillas says that Wright's violence began with possessive comments that escalated to fatphobic attacks.

The verbal violence was followed by an attack of anger and then a beating.

“She hit me several times against the wall, in the face, until she punched me so hard that she knocked me to the floor,” says the 29-year-old.

Once on the ground, Casillas remembers that she was kicked in the back by her.

“At one point I thought that if she received one more punch, she was going to die,” says Valeria, still affected.

Her attacker approached to check if the woman was still breathing, the victim details.

Upon noticing that she was still alive, she took the opportunity to push her out of the place.

"Get out of my house.

“You're fat, you disgust me,” she yelled at him as she threw her things out the door at him.

With a bloody face, disoriented and without her passport, Casillas says she was left on the street.

Some passersby called the purple police patrol (a team specialized in dealing with cases of gender violence) and it took her to the Los Rosales Clinic.

EL PAÍS has had access to her medical history, which describes that Valeria was admitted with multiple trauma, a sprained ankle and a wound to the skull, which was closed with five stitches.

From her hospital bed, the professional photographer asked her family in Mexico for help.

Her mother alerted the Mexican consulate in Bogotá, which was in contact with Valeria by phone.

"She was in a state of anxiety, paranoia, fear, frustration...", recalls the woman.

Case documents. COURTESY

Before leaving, she still does not know with what force, Valeria reported her attacker to the Prosecutor's Office.

The police managed to recover her passport from Wright and the woman flew emergency to her country on December 29 thanks to a ticket that her mother bought for her.

She returned to her home battered, but convinced that she had escaped death.

An opportunity that 403 women in Colombia and 827 in Mexico did not have, all of them victims of feminicide in 2023.

Wright's harassment continued after the assault.

Casillas explains that she has continued to receive cell phone messages and veiled threats.

“She wrote to me telling me that I deserved it because she was fat.

That she loved me and had given me a chance, but that she couldn't handle my current physical state.”

Added to this siege is a financial debt of more than a thousand dollars that the man maintains with Valeria.

Which she refuses to settle for her.

Valeria's case is proof that sexist violence does not understand borders or nationalities.

Only one in 10 women dare to report both in Mexico and Colombia, and more than 90% of these cases remain in total impunity.

Victims know that reporting is a tortuous path that can take months, even years.

On many occasions, these women not only have to face their abusers, but also authorities and a justice system that punishes and violates them.

Although Casillas filed a complaint for attempted feminicide, also known as 'attempted feminicide', the Prosecutor's Office classified the case as family violence, a crime with much lower penalties.

In addition to the above, the Colombian justice system demanded that he return to attend the hearings in person.

For three weeks, with no news of his case, he dedicated himself to asking his country's Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Alicia Bárcena, for help.

Through social networks, the chancellor saw images of a woman with a face full of bruises, asking for her help.

“I feel desperate.

I was the victim of an attempted femicide while visiting Colombia by an American resident in that country.

Please help,” Casillas wrote on the social network X. Her message was seen by more than two million people.

The chancellor asked the general director of consular protection to attend to her case and reiterated her willingness to support her.

After an interview on Mexican television, the authorities began to follow up on the case.

“That day I began to feel the support of the authorities, the embassy is in communication with me and the ones I am struggling with a bit are the authorities in Colombia.”

This newspaper contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but did not receive a response to its request.

Without having clear and precise information about the progress of his complaint in Colombia, when they announced the hearing to charge him, he requested that it be done virtually.

Just 48 hours before the meeting, she met the Ombudsman's public defender who had been assigned to her, and did not have time to speak with him before the hearing.

Casillas claims that, thus, his attorney did not know the details of the case.

This newspaper contacted the lawyer in question, who refrained from providing information, referring this procedure to the Prosecutor's Office.

The latter does not have effective channels to provide more data that allows us to know the progress of the complaint.

As planned, the hearing took place last Friday, January 19.

Although Wright's activity on social networks indicates that he remains in Pereira, the man has not shown up, claiming that he was not in the city.

Thanks to Law 1257 of 2008, in Colombia no justice operator can force her to face her aggressor if that is not her will.

“It is a right that the Constitutional Court has reiterated in several rulings, and it implies that we must adopt tools that the justice system already has to guarantee the continuity of the judicial process, the investigation and reach the end with a sanction,” he declares to EL PAÍS Adriana Alquichides, lawyer expert in gender violence.

A screenshot of the messages that Wright sent to Casillas.

Wright was never arrested after the attack, despite the evidence against him and the harassment of the victim.

Casillas assures that this is not the first time that his attacker has been reported for violence against women.

The man was convicted in 2009 for possession of cocaine and served a sentence in Illinois, according to official documents to which this newspaper has had access.

After that he lived 10 years in Mexico and then moved to Colombia.

Through his publications on platforms such as Facebook or WhatsApp, Wright continues with his life, as shown in photos he posted just a few hours after the attack.

He has not been arrested nor has his statement been taken.

“I fear for my life, that's why I don't want to return to Colombia.

In addition, he also has a Mexican residence permit and I am afraid that there will be repercussions,” says the woman.

In desperation for his attacker to flee, Casillas went to the United States embassy to ask for help.

The authorities of that country referred him to the Colombian police, arguing that they could do nothing against one of their citizens abroad.

“What he did to me, he could do to more women,” the photographer denounces.

After the hearing on January 19, the woman's defense managed to reclassify the investigation of the crime as attempted feminicide due to the brutality of the acts and thanks to the evidence provided by the victim.

A month has passed since the photographer experienced, what she considers, one of the most painful episodes of her life.

Meanwhile, her attacker remains free.

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