Uruguay: the complaint of gang rape of a woman that shakes the country

The complaint of a gang rape of a 30-year-old woman has shaken Uruguay to the point that its president, Luis Lacalle Pou, declared that the situation is “disgusting and aberrant.”

The case came to justice after the victim, a 30-year-old woman, denounced that several individuals sexually abused her at dawn on Sunday.

Justice is trying to determine if there were four or five men who participated in the rape, informed sources familiar with the investigation.

Until Tuesday night there were four people summoned for this crime.

Although scientific evidence is still awaited to identify those responsible, the Uruguayan sexual crimes prosecutor Sylvia Lovesio maintains that it is an unprecedented case for this country of 3.5 million inhabitants.

“In Uruguay yes, it is an unprecedented event”Says Lovesio, who leads the investigation, to BBC Mundo.

But the facts have also provoked warnings about the way in which Uruguayan society, considered avant-garde on certain issues, treats sexual crimes in the 21st century.

The complaint

According to the complaint, the victim went dancing over the weekend at a pub in the Cordón neighborhood, near the center of Montevideo, and met an individual who invited her to his home.

She agreed to go with a friend and after arriving, she retired together with the man to a room where they both began to have consensual sexual relations alone.

Suddenly, at least three other individuals appeared in the room and, together with the same man who had brought the woman there, began to abuse her.

Her friend was waiting in the street. When the victim managed to leave in a state of extreme anguish and told him what had happened to him, they filed a telephone complaint.

Prosecutor Lovesio says the medical examiner’s reports she received Tuesday confirm the woman was “obviously the victim of rape.”

And he points out that the victim, who has received assistance from specialists, “is obviously in a terrible emotional and psychological shock.”

On Sunday morning, The police arrested three people at the same address. —a teenager and two tenants— who were summoned and were released with the prohibition to approach the victim or leave the country.

“These people were not arrested in flagrante delicto, which would be the hypothesis for which I could have requested prison,” explains Lovesio. “That would have happened if the police arrived and found them abusing the victim.”

The prosecutor hopes to request the preventive detention of those accused once she obtains sufficient evidence, including the results of the DNA tests carried out on them.

The adults refused to voluntarily give up their DNA samples, local media reported, and the court is expected to issue an order to collect them.

“Cultural change”

Uruguay has an advanced tradition in Latin America in matters of law and social protections.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the country passed pioneering laws on issues such as divorce by the sole will of women or women’s suffrage.

And in the past decade, it became one of the few countries in the region to decriminalize voluntary abortion, as well as the first in the world to legalize the marijuana market.

However, the complaint of gang rape has raised questions about how much Uruguay is doing to protect victims of sexual crimes and punish rapists.

The Uruguayan Network against Domestic and Sexual Violence, which brings together various civil society organizations, on Tuesday called for a “cultural change” to avoid events such as the one denounced.

In particular, it called for “teaching the gender perspective and gender-based violence in the education system, from nursery school to university,” in addition to training in the justice system.

“As long as this issue is not really a #national emergency (…) women will continue to be raped and without having an adequate institutional response,” the statement said.

President Lacalle Pou argued on Tuesday that the sentence should be exemplary “for these acts that are not typical of the human being and are not typical in this case of the male gender.”

“We should be ashamed,” he said.

However, Lovesio points out that in Uruguay there are only three public prosecutor’s offices for sexual crimes, each of which has between 800 and 1,000 investigations and a growing reporting load.

Compare that for economic crimes the country has four prosecutor’s offices, although they receive fewer complaints, and for flagrant crimes such as theft or robbery there are 16 prosecutor’s offices.

“The sexual crimes that have grown so much (…) should have another management at the level of public policies, have more resources,” he maintains and points out the need to develop prevention policies.

“Now we are seeing that those who commit these crimes are young people. We have to try to stop this somehow.”

In his opinion, the penalties that the country contemplates for sexual crimes are “ridiculous” and difficult to achieve in their maximum degree due to the high test requirement.

Some recall that in 2014 and 2019 there were two different complaints of alleged group sexual abuse in Uruguay, but they concluded without being found guilty.

Now the prosecutor believes that if the proper steps are followed and the necessary evidence is presented at trial, the new complaint of gang rape could end up with prison sentences.

“I understand that if it is proven that this was the case,” he says, “the prosecution is obviously going to ask for the highest penalty, which in my opinion will never be enough because of the legislation we have.”