The historic environmentalist Santiago Martín Barajas (Teruel, 1962), one of the founders of Ecologistas en Acción, has been denounced for a sexual assault on a woman, as eldiario.es announced this Thursday. The events under investigation occurred at the end of July and the plaintiffs are three women who felt uncomfortable due to Martín’s actions for at least two decades. A court in Arganda del Rey (in Madrid) investigates the events. Martín Barajas has been summoned to testify on October 30.
The environmental entity has assured that it was not aware of or had received complaints about this case, so has initiated an internal investigation and has removed Martín Barajaswho has not had organic responsibilities at Ecologistas for many years. For the moment, the accused has denied the facts attributed to him.
Injury report
According to the aforementioned digital newspaper, one of the women has an injury report signed by the doctor at a health center after she came with a anxiety attack and tell him what happened. Later, she herself filed a complaint in which she detailed the events, provided the contacts of several people to whom she told what happened immediately afterwards, and included the names and contacts of two other women who claim to have experienced inappropriate behavior on the part of Martín Barajas, one of the most powerful and influential members of the environmental organization and its first general coordinator, elected in 1989.
According to eldiario.es, the complaint states that the complainant met with the environmentalist and he declared to her. «He surrounded my waist and rushed towards me kissing me, I quickly withdrew telling him not to continue there, to leave me, my body became alert and I began to sweat very nervously. He then insisted and told me that he was happy for us to lie naked in bed and do nothing. […] To my surprise, he touched my breast, caressed my mouth and continued hugging me, it made me feel terrible,” always according to the version of this digital medium.
The other two women have not yet joined the complaint filed against the historic founder of Ecologistas, an agronomist by profession who has been active in the environmental movement since 1979.
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