Veronica Zapana S. / La Paz
Abraham Peters Dick, a rapist who was sentenced to 25 years in prison without the right to pardon in 2011 for harassing more than 150 girls, adolescents and women in the Mennonite colony of Manitoba, together with seven other people, paid $ 25,000 to get out of prison and since 2019 he returned to live in the same area where he committed the crime in the department of Santa Cruz.
For freeing the rapist, the Government filed a complaint against Judge Manuel Baptista, lawyer Juan Carlos Zuñagua and the director of the Rehabilitation center, Alfredo Negrete. In addition, the Executive follows a process to the other judge who granted house arrest to the three justice operators.
“This subject has confessed that he has paid the administrators of justice $25,000 to release him,” said the Minister of Government, Eduardo del Castillo, yesterday when he officially presented the rapist who was recaptured by the Police.
The prosecutor assigned to the case, Mirtha Mejía, told Página Siete that, in her statements, Peters indicated that this money was divided between her lawyer, the judge and the director of the Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Center.
“According to his story, he said that his lawyer asked him little by little. He told him I need money for this and he gave, ”explained Mejía and assured that the rapist confessed that his lawyer asked him for money to pay the judge and the doctor. According to the prosecutor, the sentenced man declared: “While I was giving, I had to see the results.”
The case of Abraham and seven other men who raped more than 150 women from the Mennonite community in Manitoba (Santa Cruz) caused a stir in 2008 and 2009.
“They committed rapes by entering houses, they made the victims and their families sleep. They abused both the mothers and the girls,” said a source who preferred to keep his name confidential.
After a complaint, the case was uncovered and the eight Mennonites were arrested. In 2011 they were sentenced to 25 years in prison without pardon.
Abraham was the youngest of all the defendants, at the time he was 19 years old. The source indicated that after determining the sentence they appealed and in 2012 the sentence was executed.
The rapist was in the Palmasola prison and remained for eight years, during which time he lived with his partner.
But, in 2019, he was released thanks to the first Execution Judge, Manuel Baptista. According to the complaint, this justice operator used a medical certificate to issue house arrest in favor of Abraham.
Prosecutor Mejía said that in this case a medical certificate issued by the director of the Center for Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts was used. This document indicated that the aggressor was supposed to be rehabilitated. “But the rule says that only people who are 60 or older or who are in the final phase of a terminal illness can benefit from home detention, but he did not meet either of those two reasons,” she said.
According to Mejía, when the director of the rehabilitation center was asked about the case, “he confessed that he received the judge in this establishment and asked him to make a report so that (the sentenced person) be transferred to the (place). For this reason, he went to the prison, he only looked at Abraham and with only that, he determined his transfer.”
“When I asked him if he did any laboratory evaluation, he said no and that he had already certified toxicology,” explained prosecutor Mejía.
The representative of the Public Ministry said that Abraham “never” -according to his partner- went to the center as a patient, so when he left prison he went home, in the town of Los Troncos, located in the Manitoba community of Santa Cruz , that is to say that he returned to the same area where he committed the abuse. “His partner indicated that it was the doctor who visited his house twice,” she said.
Mejía indicated that Negrete and Zuñagua testified, but Baptista refrained from doing so.
Yesterday, the Minister of Government confirmed that it was the lawyer who planned and had contacts with the director of the hospital, “where he supposedly had to serve his sentence, but (Abraham) never set foot in that center.”
The representative of the Public Ministry indicated that the judge is also being investigated for releasing a serial rapist in the country.
Zuñagua, Negrete and Baptista were referred to justice. At his precautionary hearing, the judge, Primo Flores, gave the three house arrest.
Mejía denounced that the hearing was closed and that Judge Flores indicated that he could not base his sanction on the defendant’s statement. Given this situation, Minister Del Castillo indicated that he will challenge the ruling issued by Judge Flores and denounced him for the crimes of prevarication and breach of duty to protect women in situations of violence. “Today we filed the complaint,” he said.
After being recaptured, Abraham was transferred again to the Palmasola prison.
