Gender violence: errors of justice in processes for sexual and intrafamily violence – Courts – Justice

A prosecutor who makes a preliminary agreement in which the negotiation with the perpetrator of a woman consists of doing a work in the house of the investigator. A process of sexual violence against a girl who has been frozen for 14 years because the file was lost. An accused of sexual violence who asks to exclude as evidence against him a video because he says it was recorded without his permission.

These judicial absurdities are part of three stories of violence against women, known by EL TIEMPO, that reached the high courts. These courts made harsh pronouncements due to the incomprehensible facts that affected the administration of justice, and that led to the victims not receiving a timely or effective response.

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These three cases perfectly expose what happens in the judicial processes that are initiated each year for sexual or intra-family violence, crimes in which the majority of those affected are women. This year alone, until August, Legal Medicine had carried out 11,775 medical legal examinations for alleged sexual crimes against women, and for 24,465 cases of domestic violence, also against them.

The most worrying thing is that impunity in these events is higher than 70 percent, and the processes that go to trial are few compared to the magnitude of this scourge.

The lost file

This impunity is reported in the case that reached the Constitutional Court due to the judicial delay incurred by the First Sectional Prosecutor of Barrancabermeja and the Third Promiscuous Court from that city in a complaint for abusive carnal access against a 7-year-old girl.

Following the complaint, filed by the girl’s mother on April 27, 2006, the case went to a juvenile court because, according to the Prosecutor’s Office at that time, the alleged perpetrator was under 18 years of age.

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Eleven years went by without the process having any action until, with the support of the Regional Corporation for the Defense of Human Rights, the need to unarchive the case was raised before a judge in 2017. But in June of that year they were informed that it was not possible to reopen the process because the file did not appear.

The Constitutional Court reviewed a guardianship of the victim’s mother, who is now 21 years old, but who has an intellectual disability that prevents her from presenting that judicial remedy herself. The high court found that since the file was lost, the case is in impunity, it could prescribe in April of the other year, it is not known who was responsible for the sexual violence the girl suffered, or if she was indeed a minor.

Thus, the Court said, an investigation was never initiated before the complaint, because once the case reached the Third Promiscuous Family Court of Barrancabermeja, it omitted its duty to register it in the filing books and, therefore, the file was lost. which has led to the violation of the victim’s access to the administration of justice in these 14 years.

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Therefore, although the file was lost in the Family Court, The Court assures that the person who must assume the duty of rebuilding it is the Prosecutor’s Office, because she was the one that received the complaint, and therefore must fulfill this task within a maximum period of two months. He also asked the Attorney General’s Office, the Judiciary, and the Attorney General’s Office to investigate the officials who were involved in the loss of the file.

Reduction of penalty for works

When Jorge Daniel Ruíz Convers worked as a prosecutor for the Unit of the Center for Attention to Victims of Intrafamily Violence in Fusagasugá, rreceived a lawsuit against a man for the crime of domestic violence committed against his permanent companion.

In the middle of the process, court records say, Ruíz Convers induced the defendant, who was a construction teacher, so that he could carry out some works for free and put tiles in his house, in exchange for granting him a principle of opportunity, later file the case and not put him in jail. He even read the Penal Code to him and told him that he was exposed to a penalty of 8 years if he did not do the required work.

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The investigated had also signed an act of commitment not to hit his wife again, but he did not comply with it, he mistreated her again, he did not attend treatment for alcoholism, and even so the Prosecutor did not withdraw the judicial benefits. This, of course, ended up affecting the woman who had filed the complaint.

Therefore, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice overturned an acquittal in favor of Ruíz and sentenced him to 8 and a half years in prison, reminding him that, as a prosecutor, he had a duty to act upright and honest, without seeking personal gain.

A test without permission

Within the judicial processes, the high courts have also found outrageous arguments that come from the defenders and those accused of sexual or domestic violence.

This is the case of a man convicted of sexual acts with a three-year-old girl, who was his neighbor. What he was doing with the girl was known one day when the mother went out to do some shopping, left the minor at home, and installed a cell phone that had the video recording function activated.

When he returned, the girl told him what the neighbor had done, which was recorded in the video. In the criminal process, he affirmed that this evidence was illegal, because it was recorded without the consent of those who appeared there, and even questioned the authenticity of the recording, facts that led to a judge, in a first decision, absolved.

(Also read: Ángela Ferro: ‘The defense has told lies to discredit me’).

In evaluating their arguments, the Court said that “In front of the laconic” reference made by the accused, when he said that his fundamental right to privacy was violated by recording his image without his consent, It was necessary to remember that crime victims (or in this case the girl’s mother) are allowed to make this type of recordings to pre-construct the evidence of these events. For this reason, the Criminal Chamber of the Court sentenced him to nine and a half years in prison.

The high levels of impunity surrounding these crimes

This year, according to the open data of the Attorney General’s Office, that institution has opened more than 68,400 criminal news for domestic violence. And in Legal Medicine, whose figures are lower, since it only records the cases on which a medico-legal examination was made, there are 31,725 ​​records of victims.

However, the same statistics from the Public Prosecutor’s Office show the slowness of justice to face these crimes. Of all the cases opened this year, preliminary figures show that the majority, 94 percent, are under investigation, with no charges being filed. Only 3,632 (5.3 percent) are on trial and only 405 convictions (0.5 percent) appear.

In last year’s figures, according to the accountability report of the Prosecutor’s Office, only 27 percent of the cases of domestic violence were charged, and of these, 24.9 percent were convicted.

This impunity is also seen in sexual violence. Last year the Prosecutor’s Office stated that of the cases received, only in 25.8 percent was there an imputation, of which only 30.7% were convicted.

The magnitude of impunity is such that recently the Constitutional Court, when studying a case of an indigenous woman who for 15 years suffered violence by her partner, said that ordinary justice cannot be presented with “moral superiority” or as ” the champion of gender justice ”.

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Precisely, and yesterday the Attorney General Francisco Barbosa signed an agreement with the EUROsociAL Program to strengthen the application of the gender perspective in criminal investigations in which, within contexts of violence in their homes, women kill their aggressor. This work, said the Prosecutor’s Office, will improve the response to criminal behaviors of intrafamily violence, sexual violence and femicide that, he said, are a priority in the Strategic Direction of the accusing entity.

TIME consulted Helena Hernández, criminal lawyer, who spoke of the problems that continue to lead to justice for the victims of these crimes limping or never arriving.

One of the first problems, he pointed out, is the lack of suitability of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in these matters. But also, says Hernández, there is a lack of “an internal control system that holds prosecutors responsible for the misguided legal adjustments” they make.

It also points out that many investigations start badly because a good analysis of the context is not made, the level of risk of the victims or history of violence is not studied.

Hernández also says that aThe National System of Statistics on Gender-Based Violence is still pending, that was created in 2015, which makes it difficult to have clear data and an accurate diagnosis that can be used before judges. In addition, it ensures that the merit contests that are made to judicial officials, judges and prosecutors need to be much more demanding, so that an important selection criterion is competences from a gender perspective.

As many officials do not understand this gender perspective, they do not apply it in their judicial processes, which, according to Hernández, leads to the failure to resort to tools such as anticipated testimonial evidence, the threshold required to prove sexual crimes is raised, or stereotypes continue to be reproduced.

MILENA SARRALDE DUQUE
Deputy editor of Justice
Twitter: @MSarralde