Romina Celeste Papasso accused the senator of the National Party Gustavo Penadés of sexual abuse when she was 13 years old, according to what she recounted on the television program We do what we can. The legislator will file a defamation complaint and summoned the media for a statement this Wednesday at 11 in the morning, as reported by El País and confirmed The Observer with relatives of the senator.
The young woman had told on social networks that a white leader had abused her when she was a minor and that the same person came out to say that she was not part of the National Party after she was convicted of spitting on an official from the Municipality of Montevideo in the middle of the conference offered by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva during his visit to the country.
This Tuesday, Papasso gave an interview to the program We do what we can hosted by Richard Galeano, where he said that, after speculations that emerged on social networks, he wanted to clarify that he was referring to Senator Penadés.
He stated that he will not criminally denounce him for the abuse perpetrated since more than 15 years have passed and that the worst thing for his case was social condemnation.
The story of the facts
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 was what changed my life. Because when he leaves me he tells me: I’m going to leave you inside the park so that no one sees. He leaves me inside the park and from there another car immediately stops me. I go up and he pays me again. It was another person. The same modus operandi. The same way,” he said.
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.
