Causa n° 978
Keywords
Procedural Information
Tribunal Oral en lo Criminal Federal (Criminal Federal Court)
Bahia Blanca
12/03/2012
Victims / Plaintiffs in the first instance
Defendants / Respondents in the first instance
Fact Summary
After receiving a formal complaint about a case of sexual exploitation, the police in the city of Punta Alta conducted a raid at the bar "Afrodita (Aphrodite)" located in this city. In the place were two women from Paraguay who claimed to be victims of sexual exploitation. The prosecutor argued that the defendants recruited the victims by means of deception and transported in September and November 2008 from the Republic of Paraguay to the city of Punta Alta in Argentina, and here were harboured to work as prostitutes in the local mentioned above.
The prosecutor stated that with the evidence offered and produced at the hearing of debate it has been established that all the defendants had set up a organization to sexually exploit the foreign women, who were eventually rescued, and that each of them took part, in one way or another, of the different steps required for this type of crime either recruiting, transporting, harbouring or receipting them, with the sole purpose of sexually exploiting them, taking advantage of the women’s vulnerable position. According to the prosecution the defendants facilitated the victims a place to live, deceiving them about the real job they had to do, intimidating them, and ultimately affecting their dignity, sexuality and freedom of movement.
The defendants denied the charges and in their defense claimed that the profits of the bar did not come from the prostitution of the women, but that the actual presence of women at the bar increased the clientele, and the women offered drinks to customers. Besides that any sexual relationship between the women and customers, was a their business and had to be outside the bar. Also the defendants added that other Paraguayan and Brazilian women that worked at the bar were usually brought there by a friend who already worked or had worked at Afrodita.
Some of the women who worked there said they were free, that worked there by choice and never suffered any kind of abuse, while some others said they had no knowledge of any act of violence in the brothel, to use the money to buy their work clothes and pay the security system in the property.
Because of the contradictory testimonies of the victims, the Court decided to declare the defendants not-guilty.
Charges / Claims / Decisions
Article 145, second paragraph, II Penal Code
Article 145, second paragraph, II Penal Code
Aggravated Trafficking in Persons
Article 145 bis, second paragraph, II Penal Code
Article 145, second paragraph, II Penal Code
Article 145, second paragraph, II Penal Code
The Court ruled as follows:
"The argument presented by the prosecution is not assertive to the point of founding at its base a sentence and even if it was accepted, the deceptive artifice or argument has not been proven as to vitiate the consent of women (aged 18 years), which certainly exceed the mere expression of a lie. To argue the contrary is to adhere a position substantially discriminatory, equals practically poverty with a sort of inability to make decisions about ones own life plan and this simply because we do not share the decision.
We must not lose sight of the age of those who call themselves victims, or that at least one of them was warned by her mother of the risk of the proposal that she had received.
Nor was there any evidence on the declared state of vulnerability in which they would be found, which should be tested in the case, because it is a state that goes beyond mere poverty or economic downturn. It was not even required a socio-environmental information on which to argue.
All this is measured by the Court a long with the other elements relatives by the reading of the debate, of neat and detailed description in the act that implements the audience.
In short, the evidence presented in the case is totally insufficient to prove criminal behavior under the conditions and terms that the prosecution advocates, or enough to destroy the version given by VS that is perfectly coherent with the one of other defendants.
The prosecutors themselves seemed to have noticed the fragility of the evidences when they asserted that when crimes like the one here to judge, for the scope of secrecy in which the evidences are produced, the evidence must be assessed with a comprehensive approach, without excessive formal rigors.
Thus the Tribunal considers that the system of interpretation, scope and valuation of proof has the respective procedural rules as limits and fundamentally the principles that define the trial as fair and impartial. There are not cases where because of the type of offense (more or less dreadful offenses) or feeling sympathy or antipathy towards the defendants or the victims, the procedural guaranties can be expanded or even reduced.
In this case, the committing of the crimes charged to the defendants are not well credited, lacking the overwhelming certainty required by law, and so a conclusion consistent with the position derived by the defense argument is imposed, which will be defined in the dispositional part of the statement .
For reasons exposed in the Agreement that precedes and the provisions contained in articles 398, 399, 402 and 530 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Nation, the Court declared:
Acquit the defendants JS, VS, LAP, JMRD and LRM for not having been proven the existence of the crime of aggravated trafficking, for which they were charged, as noted in the city of Punta Alta between 27 and 28 November 2008”.
Sources / Citations
Judgment - Causa JS_VS_ 978
Database of UFASE (Unidad Fiscal de Asistencia en Secuestros Extorsivos y Trata de Personas), Ministerio Publico Fiscal, Republica Argentina
