The nationalist senator Gustavo Penadeswill testify this Thursday at 3:00 p.m. before the Prosecutor for Sexual Crimes, Alicia Ghione, due to the allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation that he has against him, reported Telemundo and confirmed The Observer.
The legislator will be questioned about at least seven complaints against him for sexual abuse of minors. The investigation was initiated ex officio by the Prosecutor’s Office, after the militant trans nationalist, Romina Celeste Papasso, publicly stated that she was abused by Penadés when she was around 14 years old and had not yet started the gender transition.
Ghione, who took the statements from all the victims, was awaiting the results of the technical reports he had requested to summon the senator to testify.
As reported by lawyers from the Legal Office of the University of the Republic, Juan Raúl Williman and Soledad Suárez, the accounts of their defendants —there are already five— demonstrate the same modus operandi: minors contacted by an intermediary, meetings with the senator in high turnover hotels and a payment in exchange for it.
The initial complaint
The militant of the National Party Romina Celeste Papasso was the first to denounce the senator. Initially she did it publicly and then she filed her complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office.
In the program We do what we can, Papasso indicated that when he was 13 years old he lied to his parents about his whereabouts and went “on the streets”. She indicated that one day she was standing on Avenida Italia, where Luis Alberto de Herrera begins, “the one on the side of the park, a continuation of Luis Alberto de Herrera, which is like a monument,” she said. “I was walking from Avenida Italia to the fountain that is in Ricaldoni,” she said.
According to Papasso, Penadés was coming from the front in the car. At that time, she had not yet started her gender transition and was a boy. She noted that the senator stopped when she saw him and asked if she wanted to take a ride. She got on and the politician asked her what she liked.
After that, he “ended up convincing” him to go to a motel and never asked for his ID. He asked her to lower the back seat so the people at the hotel entrance wouldn’t see him. Inside the room, he recounted, they had sex.
“When he left, he told me: I’ll leave you this little gift. It was money. I know that at that time it was a lot of money,” he said. She also asked for his cell phone number.
Thus, they left the hotel together and left it in the middle of Parque Batlle.
That’s how, she said, she started prostitution. According to her, there was a second meeting that took place after Penadés called her on the phone, but then the link was cut off.
