▲ Naomi Yamileth Rodríguez Pérez, detained in Cereso 2.Photo The Day
Sanjuana Martinez
The newspaper La Jornada
Sunday, July 21, 2024, p. 12
As a fervent Christian, Ruth Escareño recalled her readings of the Bible and the verse from Matthew 18:6-11: Whoever harms one of my little ones deserves to have a millstone tied around his neck and be thrown into the depths of the sea.
.
They are babies, why?
she exclaims crying.
Still unable to assimilate the suffering that teacher Naomy Yamileth Rodríguez Pérez allegedly inflicted on her daughter – and 25 other babies between the ages of 43 days old and two and a half years old – the words of the Public Ministry agent of the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Attention to Women Victims of Crime for Reasons of Gender and the Family (FEM) of Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, echo in her head:
Ladies, we are dealing with a very large mafia. We believe that the teacher works for an international network.
told them.
And yes, we have already seen that there is a lot of money involved. The case has not moved forward for a year and the prosecution always postpones the hearings. The teacher has 36 private lawyers to handle the 26 files.
And he concludes: Someone is protecting her
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This horror story began in May of last year, when Ruth began to notice changes in behavior and nocturnal crises in her two-year-old daughter (ISCE), after picking her up from the daycare center with registration U0499 Techo Comunitario, AC, subrogated by the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS) and located in the Toribio Ortega neighborhood, in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua.
On Monday, May 22, 2023, at 8 a.m., the girl began to cry upon entering the nursery: “As soon as she entered, her smile disappeared and she told me that she didn’t want to go in. She cried and touched her vagina saying ‘pee, pee, pee.’”
Ruth no longer had any doubt that something was wrong. She called her pediatrician to get checked out and the doctor told her: No, go to the prosecutor’s office. There are medical examiners there and they are the ones who can help you.
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He went for the girl and took her to the prosecutor’s office while his sister explained the situation to them: “I was in shockI couldn’t even speak. They asked me many questions for hours. The girl was asked if anyone had hurt her.”
Yeah
the little girl answered, touching her vagina and anus. The public prosecutor then said: The girl is very young and there is not much credibility in her testimony. I will take her to the medical examiner.
.
Both were in the prosecutor’s office for more than six hours, without eating, until the doctor appeared: “The girl was asleep and took the opportunity to examine her vagina; then, when she touched her anus, the girl woke up saying: not there, not there
Obviously, it hurt.
As they left, Ruth asked her daughter: What’s wrong, my love? Why were you so scared? They were touching you there at the nursery?
The girl answers affirmatively. Who?
he asks her again. Without hesitation, the girl exposed her aggressor: “The teacher Omi (Naomy)”.
After a while, they confirmed what he already imagined: Your daughter has two tears in her anal area. It is evident that she had penetration. We are going to take her to file a complaint.
he told her and was forbidden to talk about the case.
IMSS, negligence
File 3926/2023 for the crime of aggravated rape
It was the first of 26 cases of abused girls and boys. Instead of closing the daycare immediately, the IMSS and the Judicial Branch (PJ) of the FEM decided to leave it open as normal and keep the reported events secret, while the number of victims increased.
The judicial investigation
The action was slow and deficient. Instead of applying an immediate protocol for the protection of minors, the director of the nursery, Nidia Lara Lara, knew what had happened in May and handed over the files of the nursery’s teaching staff, but without the videos from the cameras, arguing that they were in a blind spot
or with images blurry
.
“The cameras were kept by the IMSS. The police went and arrested the teacher at the daycare center. The parents noticed and asked the director, but she downplayed it: ‘everything is fine, it’s just for an investigation.’ So I called her to say: ‘Nidia, I know it’s sexual abuse,’ and she answered: ‘No, how do you think? Of course not.’ But I told her: ‘I demand that you hold a meeting to notify the parents.’”
The director asked Ruth not to go to that meeting, but she decided to go: He told us complete lies: that it was a case of child abuse, but never that it was sexual abuse. He claimed that action had been taken in time and that they were cooperating with the authorities. And that everything was fine.
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Ruth then decided to talk to the other parents and tell them that the teacher who was in the MB classroom had abused some of the children: “That teacher was rotated through all the classrooms and I suggested that they go to the prosecutor’s office to have them checked. So more cases of girls and boys began to appear. Five more cases came out, then on Monday another three and a week later more came out again. Right now there are 26 cases; 10 boys and the rest girls.
I felt very bad because even though my daughter was safe, I thought about the others and went to the prosecutor’s office and nothing happened. Weeks and months went by and the daycare remained open as if nothing had happened.
Add: Once at home, my daughter felt more secure and told me about a girl who cried a lot because her teacher did the same thing to her. And I spoke to the girl’s mother. She told me she didn’t believe her, because her daughter talked a lot and she had never said such a thing to her. Then she went to the prosecutor’s office and realized that the little girl’s entire vagina was torn.
She says that this girl talked more and she told how the teacher threatened her so that she wouldn’t say anything.
The cases were multiplying and nobody did anything. First they suspended the nursery for a week, but then it remained open, so I went to the Human Rights Commission. We asked for it to be closed permanently and for other teachers to be investigated because there were already too many children affected. And we managed to get the IMSS to cancel the contract with the company.
It was not until July 13, 2023, two months after the first complaint, that the IMSS reported that the daycare center would be closed to investigate the allegations of sexual abuse, after the alleged aggressor, 23 years old, a graduate in education, was linked to the process and admitted days before, on July 8, to the Women’s Social Reintegration Center (Cereso) 2.
On June 29, a second complaint was filed against the same teacher: “I spoke to another mother who recommended the daycare center to alert her and she told me: ‘I’m already at the prosecutor’s office, it’s my daughter,’” she said, crying. The girl’s aunt works at the prosecutor’s office and this was a decisive factor in the teacher’s arrest five days later.
With the complaint in criminal case 3828/2023, the teacher was also linked to the process and the initial hearing was held presided over by the control judge Jorge Enrique González Rodríguez, who imposed the precautionary measure of preventive detention for a term of 24 months.
A total of 40 boys and girls were subjected to forensic examinations. And the prosecutor Wendy Paola Chávez Villanueva described the case as complex
because among the victims there are infants who do not speak or walk, so to take their statements they used the Antennas for Children method, with a cybernetic puppet operated by psychologists.
Organized crime
After the daycare center closed, Social Security has paid money to some parents of the affected children: The IMSS came to divide us, to buy and to try to cover everything up, it is an accomplice. It has many irregularities. First it offered psychological and medical support. Then, it gave 2.5 million pesos to about five families and abandoned the files.
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A year after the events, the prosecution has been postponing the hearings, first to January, then to March, then to May and now until August. turtle-like It works against the victims, because some, being so young, have already forgotten the events or refuse to remember them.
The accused was previously defended by one lawyer, then by 13 and now by 36: Suddenly many lawyers and an NGO called Innocence Project appeared to support her.
he says, referring to an alleged organization created to exonerate convicted persons. unfairly
. In addition, his father is a custodian of the Cereso.
He says that one day his daughter, upon hearing a banda song, said to him: Teacher Naomy put it on my cell phone
. Shocked, she remembered that teachers at the nursery school were forbidden to bring in phones: The girl told me that the teacher made them dance and move sexy.
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Ruth asked him: And what else did he do?
her daughter answered with an innocent smile: He took photos and videos of us
. She then told the public prosecutor and learned that during the search of the teacher’s house they found four cell phones and two laptop computers.
He added: “Last year, the public prosecutor told us that there was a lot of evidence (pornography) and this year I asked again and the court said no, when before, the public prosecutor told me: ‘With what we found in the search, there is enough evidence to sentence her. We believe it could be an international network.’”
As she cries, Ruth still does not understand what satisfaction the aggressor could have obtained: I don’t know if suffering was what excited her. I will continue to fight for justice. If I have to go to the morning press conference to present the case to the President, I will do it. I will not remain silent, they will have to kill me to silence me. They are little, they have no voice, we are the voice of my daughter and of the other children.
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