Three days after the capture of those who should have taken care of him was completed, the father, stepmother and grandmother of a minor with sexual abuse injuries in Naranjal have been called to trial for being accused of being responsible for his torture.
After an investigative work, the Police captured Maicon VM, the victim’s father, last Wednesday, and on Saturday they apprehended Mariana QH, the minor’s stepmother.
Now, Judge Wilmer Tapia Cabrera accepted the request of the Prosecutor’s Office and called them to trial, as well as Paula V., grandmother, as alleged perpetrators of the crime of torture.
The investigation was opened – ex officio – after a series of events recorded in September 2021: a 6-year-old boy would have been physically and sexually violated in the home where he lived with the now prosecuted and five stepbrothers, children of the couple aggressor
For this case, at the beginning of this month, the Judicial Council dismissed two prosecutors who carried out the first investigations in the case, denounced last September.
The 6-year-old had a stick in his rectum that caused lacerations to his intestines and kept him on the verge of death for almost two weeks. A medical report details the sexual abuse injuries.
According to a resolution of the criminal chamber of the Provincial Court of Justice, issued on October 7, the first prosecutors acted with manifest negligence in this case, in which a sister barely a year older was also physically and psychologically affected.
Prosecutor Érika V. was sanctioned for an alleged “inaction at the time of learning that minors in the Naranjal canton were subjected to mistreatment, injuries and alleged sexual abuse, and she should have requested protection measures for them, regarding the reading of the reports presented and the certified copies of the process and punctually of the same informative part”, says the resolution.
Prosecutor Kenneth AQ is sanctioned for starting an investigation for rape (22 years in prison) and filing charges for physical violence (from 6 months to 4 years), with a medical report stating obvious physical injuries -sexual. Another mistake was not filing charges against the children’s father.
The father and stepmother of the children were arrested in September, but were released after the hearing that was formulated only for violence.
The room that reviewed the complaint considered that Judge Wilmer Tapia, who acted in this case, was not found guilty for having granted precautionary measures to the stepmother of the victims, since that was a request from the Prosecutor’s Office, since the woman was giving to breastfeed an 8-month-old baby.
Judge Tapia now accepted the request of the new prosecutor in the case and called Maicon VM, father of the child, to trial; Mariana QH, the stepmother; and, Paula V., grandmother.
The couple, captured again last week, the judge ratified the preventive detention order, while the older adult must comply with alternative measures while the process lasts, in charge of the new prosecutor of the case, Yoli Pinillo, who presented before the judge his accusatory opinion, based on the elements gathered during the fiscal investigation.
There, the reports of medical, psychological and social environment assessment were included, in which the victim narrated the physical and sexual aggressions to which she was subjected –as punishment– by her stepmother.
To this was added the medical-legal report, the clinical history, versions of doctors and relatives of the family environment, among others.
MIES assures that the Prosecutor’s Office did not circumvent the cause of abuse in Naranjal in time and that despite the medical report, the suspects were not arrested
The Prosecutor’s Office issues a statement insisting that MIES and other institutions did not alert in time about the torture of children in Naranjal
The brothers are under the tutelage of the Ministry of Economic and Social Inclusion (MIES). An 8-year-old girl is in a foster home, while her younger brother is recovering, but he will have to stay in hospital for at least six months because he uses a colostomy bag to defecate. He has been operated on more than ten times to reconstruct his digestive system.
Around this case, Mariana QH is also prosecuted for the crime of rape, which she would have perpetrated against the same child, now 7 years old, the Prosecutor’s Office reported.
The crime of torture is typified in article 151 of the Organic Comprehensive Criminal Code (COIP), which sanctions the responsibility for these acts with a custodial sentence of seven to ten years in prison. (I)
Source: Eluniverso

Mario Twitchell is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his insightful and thought-provoking writing on a wide range of topics including general and opinion. He currently works as a writer at 247 news agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the industry.