The 11-year-old victim could have been groped -in her private parts- by the husband of an aunt.
DIARY OF HUILA, NEIVA
CARLOS ANDRES PEREZ TRUJILLO
For these days, the First Criminal Court of the Neiva Circuit will decide the fate of Luis Antonio Rojas, for his alleged participation in the abuse of a minor under 11 years of age, which occurred in 2016.
As established in the indictment, Mrs. María Eugenia Puentes Perdomo denounced that her daughter, in 2016, was the victim on multiple occasions of “touching her genitals” by the sentimental partner of her aunt Tania Yadira Franco Puentes, when the girl was left in charge of her.
Four years after the occurrence of the events, on August 24, 2020, before the Fourth Municipal Criminal Court with guarantee control functions in Neiva, Rojas was charged with the crime of aggravated sexual acts with a minor under fourteen years of age. , in homogeneous and successive competition.
Subsequently, the First Criminal Court of the Circuit, on April 11, 2021, held the corresponding hearing. The following year, on August 4, the preparatory hearing was held in which, prior enunciation and request of the parties, the requested evidence was decreed, there three were not admitted (that of Diana Cecilia Galezo Chávarro, the minor and the investigator, Edgar Álvarez Rodríguez), which is why Rojas’s defense filed an appeal in order to have his interventions validated again in the process.
The reasons for the request
In response to this request, Rojas told the Criminal Chamber of the Neiva Superior Court that he “complied with the argument of the necessity and relevance of the evidence by stating that the purposes of the common evidence were different from those of the Prosecutor’s Office, that is, make the investigative body’s theory of the case less probable,” he said. He also said that the idea was to investigate them on issues other than those that the accusing body eventually raised in the respective interrogations, “they are essential to prove their defensive theory and must be decreed just like the other common evidence admitted.”
According to the Court, “it is then established that the Defense did not offer reasoning that serves to frame the requested testimonies in its own theory of the case.” Reason for which his decision was to confirm the denial of the practice of those three testimonial tests.
In this sense, soon the Trial Court will rule on this process, as soon as the oral trial stage is over.
Sexual abuse in Huila
Between 2019 and 2022, the Prosecutor’s Office received more than 2,500 complaints of child sexual abuse. According to official court records from December last year, 131 convictions had been registered. As a curious fact, among the convicted abusers, there are 6 priests and 3 pastors.
This means of communication, last year the report of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, which establishes that during the second quarter of 2022, 4,817 children and adolescents would have been sexually abused throughout the country; the majority of victims would have been girls with a high number of 4,205 cases.
It was also established that 429 minors between zero and four years of age had been sexually abused, including 92 boys and 337 girls.
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Between the ages of five and nine, the cases amount to 987 children who have also been attacked, including 209 boys and 778 girls, throughout the country.
If we compare the figures of legal medical examinations for alleged sexual crimes, we observe that while in 2022, between January and February, 3,552 cases were reported throughout the country (various ages), this year in the same period 3,443 have been registered.
From the above, it can be seen that between the ages of five and 9 years, 634 complaints were registered through legal medical examinations for alleged sexual crimes.
Neiva’s case
According to the most recent figures published by the Crime Observatory, in 2021 there were 320 cases and so far in 2022 close to 300 were registered.
The figures indicate that, of every 10 children, 5 are abused daily in the department and in the city of Neiva, between 3 and 4 child victims of this crime are being reported daily.
the death of childhood
Childhood (from six to eleven years) is not going through the best moment. According to the Legal Medicine report, between January and February of this year, 24 children died in the country (5 homicides, 7 transport events, 10 accidents, 2 suicides).