The rape took place in a house in the Lima district of Santiago de Surco.
A judge in Peru this Friday sentenced five young people to 20 years in prison for having gang-raped a girl, in a case that shocked the country because of its similarity to that of “La Manada” in Spain.
Judge Lorena Janssen, of the Tenth Liquidated Criminal Court of the Superior Court of Justice of Lima, also sentenced the five involved to pay compensation of 100,000 soles (about 25,000 soles) to the victim.
Those convicted are Manuel Vela, Sebastián Zevallos, José Arequipeño, Diego Arroyo and Andrés Fassardi, all of them under 25 years of age, who on October 17, 2020 jointly raped a 21-year-old girl.
Concussion for group rape in Quito, in the style of La Manada de España
The violation took place in a house in the Lima district of Santiago de Surco, where they had gathered to hold a clandestine party that bypassed the social restrictions imposed by the covid-19 pandemic.
The evidence presented during the trial shows that the victim was drugged before the fact with a sedative substance called benzodiazepine.
The victim’s testimony tried to be delegitimized by the lawyers of the convicted persons, according to the feminist organization Flora Tristán, which provided legal support to the complainant.
Although the aggressors, who had been in preventive detention since October last year, acknowledged that they practiced sexual relations, they always maintained that they were consensual, but the examinations carried out on the victim determined evidence of a sexual attack.
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According to the victim’s account, she was taken to a bathroom without light where she was urged to undress and then be outraged by four of the five implicated.
One of the group watched the scene without wanting to participate, but failed to help the victim when she asked for help.
In the style of the infamous case of “La Manada” in Spain, this case immediately generated rejection and outrage throughout Peru, which was exacerbated after the lawyer of one of the detainees assured that the young woman “liked social life”.
The lawyer’s statement generated a chain of protests on social networks and, in a matter of hours, the message “I am a girl who likes social life” was shared thousands of times and reproduced on posters by artists and public figures.
The words of the lawyer were even criticized by the then president of the country Martín Vizcarra (2018-2020), who expressed that these alleged “mitigating factors” in the crime “are unacceptable.” (I)
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