Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 23:46:20 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: AUT: [AP] Teen Girls Raped by Mexican Cops (fwd)



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Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 13:12:48 -0500
From: Mauricio.Banda-AT-zenith.com
Reply-To: mexicoxxi-AT-csgrs6k1.uwaterloo.ca
To: mexicoxxi-AT-csgrs6k1.uwaterloo.ca
Subject: [AP] Teen Girls Raped by Mexican Cops




Teen Girls Raped by Mexican Cops

By Julie Watson
Associated Press Writer
Saturday, Oct. 16, 1999; 11:20 a.m. EDT

MEXICO CITY -- For four days, three teen-age
girls were held in a police stable, raped repeatedly
and forced to cook and clean. When their case went
to court, a new ordeal began.

For 16 hours, the girls sat in a tiny basement
courtroom, forced to listen to insults from the
officers who assaulted them and to the shouts of
"prostitutes!" from the defendants' supporters
outside the window.

Their names and home addresses were published in
national newspapers and broadcast on television.
Two of the girls, ages 13 and 15, each changed
jobs three times to avoid attention.

In the end, a judge convicted 15 former policemen
in late July of kidnapping and rape and sentenced
each to 40 years in prison. And, for the first time,
Mexico City's government was ordered to provide
therapy for the three teen-agers.

"This case sets an important precedent that will
help in this kind of crime in the future," said
Rosario Robles, the city's deputy mayor who has
since moved to the top job with the resignation
of Mayor Cuauhtemoc Cardenas. "The sexual crime
laws must be reformed to protect the victims."

The shocking nature of the case focused intense
news media attention  in the problem of rape in Mexico.

But that same attention added to the victims' trauma.
The three girls have shunned their therapy and are
virtually in hiding, maintaining almost no contact
even with those who helped them.

"You have to be extremely strong to report a rape
in Mexico," said Marcela Rivera, director of the
Mexican Association Against Violence Against Women.

A few years ago, the police officers almost certainly
would have walked free. But despite changes in
Mexican law and social norms, rape victims struggle
for even the most basic privacy and protection.

Women's rights activists tell of official investigators
asking women to prove they were virgins before being
raped. Lawyers ask victims whether they enjoyed the
rape. Rapists' families and friends threaten victims
who try to prosecute. Even relatives of victims often
accuse them of provoking the attack.

"A lot of times men in the neighborhood will start
hanging around, figuring, 'Well, they already lost
their virginity, now they have nothing left to lose,'"
Rivera said.

In states such as Michoacan and Baja California, old
laws state that charges against statutory rape
offenders can be dropped if the accused marries the
victim.

For Yessica Yadira Diaz Cazares, 16, the harassment
she suffered in the northern state of Durango after
being raped in March 1997 was too much.

After she identified the godson of the state attorney
general as one of her attackers, she was illegally
jailed overnight and beaten by police.

She took a fatal overdose of amphetamines that June,
two days after her brother was threatened and a few
weeks after a newspaper suggested she was a drug
addict and generally "flaky." Two of her rapists
were convicted last year, while a third suspect
remains a fugitive.

Yessica's mother, who was jailed along with her
daughter after they reported the attack to police,
often speaks publicly about her daughter's plight.

Women's activists say Mexico lags behind the United
States in the legal system's treatment of rape victims.

In the United States, individual states have implemented
laws prohibiting defense lawyers from discussing a
victim's past except in cases where the victim has
previously had sex with the accused.

In addition, American police departments have set
up special units to handle sex crimes and implemented
measures to limit the number of times a victim
has to tell her story. Nearly all newspapers and
television stations have policies of not using rape
victims' names.

"A lot of this is not legislated, but rather policies
of police departments which understand that this
crime is not like any other, so they try to streamline
the process to make it less obtrusive, to make it as
easy as possible for the victim," said Debbie
Andrews, executive director of the Rape, Abuse and
Incest National Network, which has more than 100
counseling centers across the United States.

Experts estimate only 15 percent of women who are
raped in Mexico City report the crime, and even fewer
do so in rural areas.

Of those who file reports, less than half follow
through because of Mexico's daunting criminal justice
system. The legal process requires victims of any
crime to confront the accused in public hearings that
sometimes run more than 24 hours nonstop.

Even child victims must endure the confrontations,
during which the accused is allowed to respond as
victims testify - sometimes without speaking through
a lawyer.

According to the testimony in the Mexico City case,
the three young women - who were 13, 15 and 18 when
they were attacked - stopped a police horseback unit
in July 1998 in a poor, crime-stricken neighborhood
to ask directions.

The officers shoved them into a truck and took them
to a police stable, where they were held for four
days, raped repeatedly and forced to cook and clean
for the men.

The girls escaped by climbing through a window and
running through the streets half-naked before
another police patrol spotted them and reported the
crime.

Cross-examination began at 10 a.m., and a crowd of
about 30 relatives of the accused policemen jeered
from outside the courtroom window as defense lawyers
grilled the three women with more than 60 questions.

By evening, it had started to rain, and the tiny
basement courtroom, packed with lawyers and
defendants, began to flood.

The session ended at 2 a.m.

Ultimately, the two younger girls retracted part of
their testimony, but the 18-year-old stuck to her
story.

That required her to go to a second cross-examination,
this time facing eight of the policemen charged in
the case.

In the middle of her testimony, one of accused
interrupted. "God is watching you," he said. "He
sees you, and knows you are a bad woman."

Lawyer Pablo Burboa, who headed the defense of 10
of the policemen, said the questions were standard.

"We never attacked or tried to break down their
morale," he said. "But we did try to get the older
girl to tell the truth."

Lucia Lagunes, an activist with the Women's Center
for Information, which helped the girls during the
trial, said her group is urging Congress to reform
how rape cases are handled - including allowing
rape victims to testify on videotape.

But defense attorneys say the constitutional
guarantee that the accused can confront accusers
is a basic legal right.

"If a person doesn't have to confront the person
being accused, then everyone would start accusing
whomever they had a vendetta against because they
would never have to face them," Burboa said.

He acknowledged the courtroom confrontations can
be traumatic and supported closing them to the
public. He said that would benefit the defendants
as well.

The convicted policemen maintain their innocence
and say they are scapegoats for a city government
trying to prove it is cracking down on rampant
police corruption.

Burboa has appealed the sentences on the grounds
that the judge's July 27 ruling didn't take into
account the younger girls' partial retractions or
medical exams that didn't show conclusive
evidence of rape.

While they welcome the support of the new mayor
and others for reforming the legal system, women's
activists say Mexican society also must change if
rapes are to be stopped.

"As long as men continue to be taught that women
are sex objects, something to have power over,
nothing is going to change," Rivera said.


(c) Copyright 1999 The Associated Press




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