José Alperovich sentenced to 16 years in prison | Three-time governor and senator of Tucumán found guilty of sexual abuse

José Alperovich, three-time governor and former national senator of Tucumán, was found guilty of raping and sexually abusing his other niece on several occasions while she worked as his secretary, “in all cases, mediating intimidation, abuse of a relationship of dependency, power and authority.” The judge in charge of TOC 29, Juan Ramos Padilla, began reading the historic verdict this Tuesday at 8:10 p.m. in a room full of reporters and television cameras, highlighting the police custody imposed on the former president a week ago. The magistrate considered all the facts told by the young woman as proven. The one who was the owner and lord of the province and had amassed enormous wealth, listened to the sentence with a solemn expression, with his eyes half closed and holding a small medallion bearing an inscription in Hebrew between the fingers of his left hand, which accompanied the beginning of the oral trial and public, on February 5. On one occasion he was seen wiping away some tears. Ramos Padilla ordered that he be detained immediately and transferred to a federal penitentiary unit. Alperovitch spent his first night behind bars. The sentence the judge read out will expire on June 17, 2040.

It is assumed that his defense, led by Augusto Garrido, a lawyer for the company of Justice Minister Mariano Cuneo Liberona, will appeal the verdict and in the next few hours, perhaps this Wednesday, will ask for his release. The judge announced that the grounds for the verdict will not be known until 3:30 p.m. on Friday, August 16: they will be communicated to the parties electronically. Alperovitch will turn 70 in April next year and could then request house arrest.

The sentence almost matches what the prosecutor’s office had requested, which was a prison sentence of 16 and a half years, and can be read as a strong message to society against the impunity of such a powerful character who acted as a feudal lord in his region. In addition, the verdict supports the importance of the victim’s word as evidence in cases of sexual violence.

The complaint requested 22 years in prison and the defense, Alperovitch, requested acquittal with the argument that everything was orchestrated by his political opponents.

What does the sentence say?

In the verdict, the magistrate considered 9 of the reported facts proven. Ramos Padilla found Alperovich “criminally responsible for the crimes of simple sexual abuse repeated on three occasions (facts 1, 3 and 5 of the trial reference), the last two committed as attempts, and six other incidents of sexual violence committed by obtaining physical access through the vaginal, anal and oral routes, by introducing parts of his body, his penis through three routes and his fingers in the first of them (facts 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9), in all cases, the abuse of a relationship of mediation, intimidation, dependence, power and authority, all of them in real competition with each other.”

Secondly, as requested by the Prosecutor’s Office, the judge ruled on a special permanent disqualification from holding public office at the national, provincial and municipal levels.

He also ordered Alperovitch’s arrest with preventive custody and his immediate transfer to a Federal Penitentiary Service prison. Also, he ordered that DNA samples be extracted for inclusion in the national registry of genetic data linked to crimes against sexual integrity.

When pronouncing the sentence, Ramos Padilla also ordered that depositions be taken to investigate three witnesses presented by the defense for perjury. These are Manuel Frías, who worked as a waiter for Alperovih; Victor Hugo Decataldo, a transportation businessman who also had a romantic relationship with one of the former president’s daughters, Sara; and David Cayetta, the leader’s former driver and mentor.

It also ordered that the filming of the testimony of the expert witnesses presented by the defense, psychologists Liliana Sedlar and Paula Sánchez Ayala, and that copies of their expert reports presented in the file be sent to the nation’s Ministry of Health. “The objective is that, through the relevant body, they evaluate the ethical conduct of the professionals, which arises from the relevant texts.”

In the judgment, the judge recognized the right of the complainant MFL regarding comprehensive compensation under the terms of art. 29, inc. 2 of the CPN, in accordance with the considerations stated in the sentence. This was a request from the prosecutor’s office in its reasoning. The complainant did not file any civil suit. But the judge recognizes his right to receive compensation – after the sentence becomes final – for the damage caused by the abuse.

“She is very impressed and relieved”

“We are really very satisfied with the sentence pronounced by Judge Ramos Padilla, who puts things in their place and comes to justice, in line with what the prosecutor Sandro Abraldes and we requested in the arguments,” he added. The lawyers of the complaint, Pablo Rovatti and Carolina Simerman, from the Legal Aid and Sponsorship Program for Victims of Crime of the General Defender of the Nation, issued a press release.

“We spoke to MFL, who is very moved and relieved, because she feels that after five years of reporting the abuse and facing a campaign to delegitimize her word, she was able to achieve what she always wanted, which is not accusations, nor fame, but her healing through justice, as she told us at the first hearing of this case, where she testified for hours,” the statement continues. Alperovitch witnessed the second wedding of the complainant’s father. She and Alperovitch are cousins.

Rovatti – who was not at the hearing because he was on vacation – and Cymerman highlighted that “this sentence” means “another milestone in the fight of victims of sexual violence against the impunity of the most powerful people.” And they highlighted “the work of national justice in this case.”

The victim heard the verdict and sentence read out virtually.

Minutes after the historic verdict, MFL spokesperson, Tucumán journalist Milagro Mariona, was surprised by the judge’s decision to order the immediate arrest of the convicted man. “The judge has set an example and set a precedent. We did not know what was going to happen today, we had faith in justice,” but “we believed that the judge was going to be lenient; it was a very important message against impunity,” she assessed. She also said that the complainant “is satisfied that the judge found the truth in her words and that is what she asked for from the moment she faced this process.” And when asked what this outcome of the trial means for the feminist movement, she replied: “It is very important.” And she added: “When you ask where are the feminists… we are here with the victims.”

I am reading the decision

Present in the hearing room of the TOC 29, located on Paraguay Street at 1500 CABA were his four children and other close friends. His wife, former senator Beatriz Rojkes – who was president of the Justicialist Party in her province and became the first female provisional president of the Senate on November 30, 2011, second in the presidential succession, with Cristina Kirchner as head of state – followed the reading of the verdict remotely.

Upon hearing the sentence of 16 years in prison, one of the daughters burst into tears, sat down on her knees holding her sister’s hand.

Oral and public hearings began on 5 February and over 70 witnesses testified over four months.

This Tuesday’s hearing was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. Alperovitch arrived at the court about forty minutes early, accompanied by the magistrate who had also taken the custody imposed on him a week earlier (on the complaint and the request of the prosecution -due to the risk of fleeing), and his four children. Family and police surrounded him to cross the wall of reporters and cameramen who were waiting for him and enter the building. He made no statement.

One such scene occurred when he entered the room, wearing a black coat on one arm, a blue suit and matching tie, a white shirt and a medallion between the fingers of his left hand with which he appeared in each of the hearings he attended personally. When he was appointed to the presidential cabinet he was accompanied by his protector Augusto Garrido, who replaced Mariano Cuneo Liberona.

Judge Padilla informed him that he had the right to say his last words before the verdict was announced, but the former president refused. Then, the magistrate declared a recess until 8 p.m. Once again, Alperovitch had to dodge the swarms of reporters crowding into the small room. And then he left without making a statement.

The niece filed a complaint in November 2019, both in the Tucumán courts and in the Special Fiscal Unit for Violence against Women (UFEM) in Buenos Aires: some of the incidents – she listed – had taken place in the Puerto Madero department owned by Alperovich, others in the house he used for his political meetings in Tucumán, in a mansion on the outskirts of the provincial capital and even inside the car he used to travel in. At the time of the complaint he was 29 years old. And parallel to this, he released a letter in which he said the incidents occurred “from December 2017 to May 2019”.

There, she even described Alperovitch as “a monster.” “I didn’t want him to kiss me. He did that. I didn’t want him to touch me. He did that. I didn’t want him to penetrate me. He did that. Still and numb, looking at the rooms, waiting for everything to be over, for time to pass. He will leave and be at my house, there will be more people around him and discrimination and work will take him away from me,” she said.

The young woman was his secretary and managed his agenda, first for proselytizing activities (Alperovitch was a senator at the time) and later within the framework of the electoral campaign for the governorship, in which he lost overwhelmingly to Juan Manzur. The elections were held in June 2019 and Alperovitch finished fourth.

Half a year after her complaint, she once again released a public letter where she lamented the delay in the investigation and the obstacles to pursue the case: “I don’t need anyone to tell me that José Alperovitch committed acts of abuse against my physical, sexual and psychological integrity for this to be true, I know it to be true, I lived it, it happened to me. Despite how difficult it is to file a complaint, I decided to take my case to court, because I needed to put things in their place and ask to free myself from their burden, ”wrote F. The complaint was believed by Judge Ramos Padilla, four and a half years after the filing.

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