One year after the group rape in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo, the victim denounced that one of the defendants sent her a video from prison to her Instagram, for which she claimed that the court should try them, a perimeter and a ban on contact for the six defendants and their families, and also set the date for the start of the oral debate.
The complaint, to which Télam had access, was presented by the victim -whose identity is withheld-, through his lawyers Hugo Figueroa and Osvaldo Cantoro, before the Oral Criminal Court (TOC) 14, raffled since the year passed to do the oral trial for the case.
In it, the lawyers for the lawsuit They denounce “the harassment” that the young woman, who is now 22 years old, has been suffering from the defendant Thomás Fabián Domínguez (22), and also mentions the mother of this defendant, and the mother and sister of Steven Alexis Cuzzoni (20). , another of the detainees, for his appearances on February 10 on the program “Todas las tardes” that is broadcast on Channel 9.
The lawyers stated that from the day of that TV program, their assistant “began to receive various messages on social networks”, but they stressed that “what is worrying about this situation” was that “Thomás Domínguez himself made contact with her through her Instagram profile.”
The lawyers reported that the message the girl received came from the profile “THpluggg”, which belongs to Domínguez and which consisted of a link to a 36-minute video entitled “Caso Palermo: it was all a lie”, in which an influencer analyzes the testimonies and videos of the case, defends the defendants and considers them innocent.
Figueroa and Cantoro accompanied the complaint with screenshots of the victim’s Instagram that leave no doubt that the aforementioned profile belongs to Domínguez because of the photos uploaded there, and because the messages that the now detainee sent him on the 28th are still visible. February of last year -the day of the event-, when they met in Palermo and they say: “Que onda reyna (sic), sos heemoda” (sic, for being beautiful).
Domínguez is the defendant nicknamed “TH” and identified in the case as “short dreadlocks” (because of the dreadlocks he wore in his hair), who presents himself on his networks as a “free style” artist, and according to the accusation, he made contact with the victim in the bowling alley and although he was not in the car where they abused him the victim, yeah he was filmed before, groping her in a kiosk in Plaza Serrano.
“That the defendant himself sends the video to the car victim would seem more than harassment,” the lawyers pointed out and for this reason he asks TOC 14 “to request a perimeter regarding the contact that the accused and their families could make with the victim of cars”.
“These contacts, more than a defensive strategy, do not result in anything other than the revictimization of a woman who is struggling to get out of a strong trauma caused by an abuse committed in a gang and in a brutal way,” the lawyers remarked in the case. written.
In dialogue with Télam, the lawyer Figueroa, affirmed: “We made this proposal because it seems to us an aberration that one of the accused contacts the victim from the prison and through Instagram. We understand that it is not appropriate and we must yes or yes take action on the matter”.
The lawyer said that his client “was doing well, but she was very upset with the video” and that “despite the fact that she returned to work, she continues with permanent psychological assistance.”
Meanwhile, Domínguez’s lawyer, Jorge Alfonso, was surprised by the complaint and assured Télam that his client “denied” having sent that message.
“He does not have a cell phone in the prison. He did not go, perhaps someone has the password to his account and has sent it to others in a general way and for an involuntary reason, this girl received it. He flatly denies it and he was scared and worried “he added.
In the same brief of the complaint for this harassment in networks, the complainants also asked the court to set a date for the start of the oral debate.
“This situation requires a closure prioritizing the mental health of my assistant, since the uncertainty of waiting for a date only affects the recovery of the named,” the victim’s lawyers said.
road to judgment
Judicial sources informed Télam that everything indicates that, for scheduling reasons, TOC 14, currently made up of substitute judges Gustavo Valle, Domingo Altieri and Gabriel Vega, will only carry out this trial during the second semester of this year.
For the hearings, which will be at least a dozen, around 25 witnesses will be summoned and the trial prosecutor will be Fernando Klappenbach.
The lawyer Alfonso, who not only defends Domínguez, but also Cuzzoni, hopes to obtain house arrest for his clients, and is confident that he will achieve “their total acquittal” in the debate, while the complainants believe that the six will be sentenced for the fact.
In addition to the aforementioned Domínguez and Cuzzoni, the other four defendants are Ángel Pascual Ramos (24), Lautaro Dante Ciongo Pasotti (25), Franco Jesús Lykan (24) and Ignacio Retondo (23).
All are serving pretrial detention in federal prisons and are charged as “co-authors” of a “sexual abuse with carnal access aggravated by the intervention of two or more people” -which provides for a sentence of 8 to 20 years in prison-, and of the ” minor injuries” -from one month to one year in prison-, caused to a neighbor who was beaten because they thought he was filming them with his cell phone.
The fact
The event occurred on the carnival holiday of February 28 of last year, at 1300 Serrano Street, in the Palermo Soho area, where a couple of bakers and another neighbor intervened when they saw that inside a Volkswagen Gol car parked next to the sidewalk was abusing a girl in a group, they confronted them and called the police.
The keys to the case were the multiple videos from security cameras that recorded the entire course of the group with the victim, the story of the young woman herself who made it clear that she never gave consent, and that of the witnesses who helped her.
