The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice confirmed that those who are prosecuted for sexual crimes against children and adolescents do not have procedural benefits established by law, according to sentence 0281 drafted by magistrate Michel Adriana Velásquez Grillet.
The ruling also adds that for those prosecuted for sexually assaulting children and adolescents “there will be no room for the application of alternative formulas for serving the sentence, because they are atrocious crimes and considered crimes against humanity that violate human rights.”
The magistrates count eight crimes that they consider heinous: sexual violence committed continuously; carnal act with especially vulnerable victim; forced prostitution; sexual slavery; illicit trafficking of women, girls and adolescents; trafficking in women, girls and adolescents; sexual exploitation of children and male adolescents and sexual abuse of children and male adolescents, committed continuously.
The Constitutional Chamber established that the Judicial System will stop prosecuting those involved in these crimes, when the victim has reached the age of majority.
“The reasons for considering the statute of limitations in a special way is to avoid impunity in the prosecution of these crimes of gender violence, given that studies in this regard have determined that the victims suffer from what is called ‘traumatism of silence’, ‘traumatism of incest’ or ‘pedophile trauma’; that is, the delay in manifesting or externalizing the suffering as a victim of that prohibited act, which justifies the denunciation of the crime”, the magistrates conclude in the sentence.
The maximum penalty
The sentence where the magistrates stress that it is prohibited to grant benefits to those who are prosecuted for sexual assaults against children arises at the request of Richard Marín’s defense attorneys. This person was sentenced to 30 years in prison after being found responsible for the crimes of aggravated and continuous sexual abuse of a child with penetration, aggravated and continuous sexual abuse of a child without penetration, according to a sentence of January 16, 2019 issued by the Court 27 of the Caracas Trial. Chamber 5 of the Court of Appeals of Caracas declared inadmissible the evidence that Marín’s lawyers presented to try to reverse the sentence to the maximum penalty, explains the Criminal.
