Photo: Colombia Informa
- Prosecutor’s office and victims’ representatives consider that the conviction should have been for violent carnal access.
On July 30, 2021, the Municipal Judge of Pueblo Rico, Risaralda, read the sentence against the members of the National Army Juan Camilo Morales Poveda, Yair Steven González, José Luis Holguín Pérez, Juan David Guaidia Ruíz, Oscar Eduardo Gil and Deyson Andrés Isaza Zapata, who were sentenced to 16 years in prison, as co-perpetrators of the crime of Abusive carnal access with a minor under 14 years of age, Article 208 of the Penal Code, in circumstances of punitive aggravation, Article 21. Also against Luis Fernando Mangaret Hernandez to whom he imposed a prison sentence of eight years, as accomplice of the same crimes. To all of them, the accessory penalty of inability to exercise public rights and functions for the same period of deprivation of liberty was imposed.
The events took place on June 21 last year, when in the rural area of Pueblo Rico, Risaralda, the 12-year-old girl, a member of the Embera indigenous people, was sexually assaulted and raped by seven soldiers attached to the San Mateo battalion of the 8th Brigade, stationed in the village school and in the vicinity of the collective territories of the Embera people.
This conviction is an important judicial precedent regarding sexual violence by members of the security forces. However, the qualification of the crime as an abusive sexual act is insufficient and revictimizing because it ignores the context of the facts, the authority of the uniformed officers and the use of weapons, which leaves no doubt about the violent nature of the aggression and the total absence of consent by the victim.
Although the penalty for both crimes is the same, both the Prosecutor’s Office and the representation of the victims exercised by the Lawyers Collective José Alvear Restrepo -Cajar, requested the variation of the classification of the criminal conduct, considering that the acts committed against the minor were adequate to the crime of Violent carnal access, but this request was rejected by the office and by the Court of Risaralda.
We call for the application of the highest standards of justice for victims of sexual violence with a differential focus on gender and ethnicity, as well as special protection for children.
In addition to legal decisions that severely and exemplarily punish this type of crime, it is necessary to adopt the necessary reforms within the security forces to eliminate structural and institutional violence against historically discriminated groups such as women, children, and indigenous peoples.
