In the middle of the room is the television.
José Alperovich smokes.
At times he spits smoke towards the camera that takes him from the front, sitting at what appears to be a desk.
His face rests on his right hand.
His arm, on the back of a chair at his side.
Drink mate, talk to someone, make comments.
But above all: smoke.
One, two, three, four cigarettes, almost one after the other.
He doesn't make gestures and you can't tell if he gets angry or turns red.
He points out from time to time making a comment to those around him but who cannot be seen.
On this side, Judge Juan Ramos Padilla, prosecutor Sandro Abraldes, defender Augusto Garrido and the representatives of the complaint, Pablo Rovatti and Carolina Cymerman – from the Legal Assistance and Sponsorship Program for Victims of Crime of the Office of the General Defender of the Nation – , are carrying out the fourth hearing in the trial against Alperovich, former senator and former governor of Tucumán.
The accused has decided, with the judge's authorization,
not to travel to Buenos Aires
to be present at the hearings, which are held once a week and are expected to last until August, and only connects remotely to listen to the witnesses. witnesses.
This Thursday is the first time that his defense presents witnesses, this time his daughter
Sara Alperovich
begins the defense strategy.
Whoever was one of the most powerful political figures in Tucumán is accused of
aggravated sexual abuse
after a niece's complaint – whose identity is preserved – for
nine acts of abuse
committed between December 14, 2017 and March 26 of 2018, in different properties in San Miguel de Tucumán and Yerba Buena, in Tucumán;
and in an apartment in Puerto Madero, in Buenos Aires.
Before Sara Alperovich gave her testimony, the first witness of the day was
Daniel JL, the victim's father
, whose identity will be preserved to protect the complainant.
Alperovich lights the first cigarette in the audience as soon as his cousin begins to testify.
He hears something on his cell phone, looks straight ahead but blows out the smoke and his image remains in the nebula.
"He is my first cousin, my father is his mother's brother. My father was godfather to Mr. José Jorge Alperovich, we are first cousins, I truly believed brothers," begins the man who says he is a surgeon, music producer and teacher.
"One morning my daughter sat me down in a bar that was close to my house and, after having seen her emotionally unstable and thin for a long time, a time when she was not Florencia, she told me: ' Dad, I need to
talk
to you.'
He told me, it's hard for me to say it, I'm the father. He told me about what a daughter can tell her father because each word pierced my chest, my soul and my heart," he said in relation to when the young woman confided in him the abuse of those who had been a victim.
"I told her 'daughter, I'm here for whatever you want'. I knew the point of what she was telling me, I asked her not to tell me more but I told her that I was going to accompany her."
she described her in relation to her first reaction upon learning of the complaint.
"He told me
'Dad they harassed me, dad they raped me'
, and I asked him,
how did they rape him if he's my cousin?
" he recalled anguished.
Alperovich took the first mate of the day, extended his arm over the chair and listened to his cousin.
"We played ball together, rang the bell and ran together, how could I expect something like that," he described the bond that united them.
Regarding what happened after the complaint was made, the surgeon said: "My daughter went to live at my house after the complaint because she needed me nearby. I was also panicked, I couldn't sleep, I had a very bad time but I had a purpose, which was to save my daughter and I achieved it, Mr. Judge."
Regarding the young woman, who worked in the 2019 campaign, in which José Alperovich tried to regain the governorship of Tucumán and lost against José Manzur, she described that: "She was shaking, she wasn't sleeping, she wasn't eating, she had lost 10 kilos. She woke up with shocks and crying spells, I had to go grab her and hold her like when she was two years old, we had a girl again, because that was what my daughter needed.
In relation to his cousin, with whom he stopped having a relationship after the complaint, he denied having anything to say to him: "I have nothing. I
just want to see my daughter healthy, mentally and physically.
For him I have nothing."
The victim only appeared during the first hearing in which she testified about the episodes of abuse and the situations to which she was subjected during her work on the campaign team.
Until now, friends and family of the complainant had testified and provided a detailed account of the physical and emotional deterioration they noticed during the time in which the abuse occurred.
"The impact this had,
I hope that you never have to experience a situation like this in your life,
but when life hits you it doesn't ask you. I never expected something like this to happen to my daughter and, if I had expected it, of course "any other person except the one that happened to me," the victim's father closed his statement.
"It destroyed his political career"
Sara Alperovich
was the defense's first witness.
The
daughter of the former senator
was also a legislator in Tucumán and an official during her father's administration.
Furthermore, according to her story, she was a friend of the complainant and they worked together during the electoral campaign during which the reported abuses occurred.
"What I always saw was that between Florencia and my father there was a very good relationship, a lot of trust," Alperovich's daughter reviewed.
He also acknowledged having had "many differences" with the young woman because of the way she handled the campaign and the role she had acquired within the team.
Until now, the prosecution presented several witnesses who made reference – through coincident stories – to the physical and emotional deterioration during that period of time.
The defense witness based her story on a romantic relationship that the complainant would have had with a councilor from San Miguel de Tucumán who, at that time, was part of Alperovich's political space.
"I knew him when I was little because he is the age of my older brother and he was always involved in the family. My father always helped him, then he continued advancing in his political career. She was very happy with the relationship, she told me when she was already a year they were together," Sara reviewed.
The defense lawyer's questions focused on this relationship and what the complainant told Alperovich's daughter.
According to her version, "she was the victim of a violent courtship."
"She made him many scenes of jealousy. She wore jeans with sneakers and a short T-shirt and suddenly she put on a sweatshirt on her tail because he wouldn't let her show," he exemplified.
"She justified it, she minimized the abuse. She told me 'he wants me to be a housewife, I want to work, he extinguishes my joys'. In addition, she received threats and harassment from this man's wife," reviewed the woman, who During this period of time she was pregnant with twins and admitted that she felt "identified with what was happening to her" because she had also been a victim of violence with a previous partner.
The dates provided by the witness coincide with the period of time in which the young woman reported that Alperovich's abuse occurred.
She also
acknowledged having noticed the complainant's physical deterioration
but attributed it exclusively to the violent relationship with this young man.
Although she "was convinced," according to her testimony, that the young woman was a victim of gender violence by a member of the political space to which they belonged, she confirmed that there
were no sanctions and that she was not removed
because it was "something private between them."
Regarding the complaint that was made in 2019, he linked it to
"something political"
.
"A person can't lie so much, she told me everything that happened to her, we had become very good friends, I am convinced that David M. ate her mind, that's why she couldn't continue any longer and ended up resigning," she declared.
The victim resigned from the campaign team at the beginning of 2019 and said that she "did not have the brains" to "give everything", but "the
run run
, the rumors" were already talking about the possibility of the young woman's complaint.
Although Sara Alperovich said she "didn't know" what they were about because she "doesn't get carried away by rumors."
She also made reference to two elements that support, for her, that it was "a great political campaign against" the Alperovichs.
"She made the complaint on November 25, the day of non-violence against women. When that happened I said: this is politics," Sara Alperovich speculated in reference to the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women when it became known. , through a statement, the formal complaint of the victim.
"We can all have mistakes, but we never imagined living through hell like that. I didn't know anything, at that moment I thought he was lying. I didn't know what he had reported, but he did it one day that was impossible to forget, we knew it came with a burden. politics. A normal girl is not going to report on a date like this," he speculated.
In addition, he added to his "doubts" that the alleged partner of the young complainant uploaded a photo to his social networks with "a political enemy" of Alperovich.
And that would have led to the complaint.
"This destroyed all of our lives,
we are living a nightmare.
Today when they denounce you you are already guilty. Being a family that comes from politics we had many unpleasant things, people who did not love my dad, but it breaks your heart that "A person like my old man, who could give Tucumán a lot of opportunities, is here," the woman concluded.
MG