A senior UNAM official, tried for sexual harassment: “You have buttocks to be in my bed and not to be unruly”

The president of the UNAM University Court, Raúl Eduardo López Betancourt, faced his first hearing this Friday accused of cruel treatment and sexual harassment of a student. The victim, MLOS, reported him to the Attorney General of the Republic for several encounters that took place in 1999, 2019 and 2020. On one of the occasions, as the Prosecutor’s Office stated in the trial, the Law professor told him: ” You have very good buttocks to be in my bed and not to be unruly”. After revealing the situation, the woman has stated that she received threats because “you don’t play with the doctor.” After presenting the evidence, the judge has granted a period of six days to decide if the professor is linked to a judicial process. He has also issued precautionary measures for the victim, whom López Bentancourt cannot approach nor with whom he cannot communicate.

In a small and cold room, the judicial process against one of the highest officials of the main university in Mexico has begun. The hearing has started more than an hour late due to technical problems in the court, which allowed the hybrid format of the trial. The victim, dressed in black, has decided to follow the case from the protected witness room, accompanied by her lawyer and a psychologist from the Prosecutor’s Office. The defendant, Dr. López Betancourt, has not arrived at the Judicial Power Center due to a recent surgical operation. With a white shirt and backed by six individual defenders, he has connected remotely.

The Specialized Prosecutor for Crimes of Violence Against Women has asked Judge Gustavo Aquiles to link the professor to a judicial process for the alleged aggravated sexual harassment and cruel and degrading treatment that he inflicted for years against MLOS According to the victim’s account, she She faced the first problem with López Betancourt when she was still a law student at UNAM.

23 years have passed, but MLOS remembers that on April 20, 1999, he was wearing tight beige pants at the waist and a slightly transparent tank top, nor does he forget that he noticed the teacher’s heavy gaze at the doors of the Faculty when he was at a protest event with some colleagues. He entered the building towards the bathrooms on the first floor, and before going up the stairs, he told her: “With those breasts so erect, the only thing you are going to stop is men.” She “was speechless to hear it.”

Two decades later, already as a postgraduate student specializing in Constitutional Law, MLOS met again with López Betancourt, who had then been elected president of the UNAM University Tribunal. On October 23, 2019, around 06:50, a little before the start of her first class, the victim said she had come across the dean, who told her the phrase “you have very good buttocks to be in my bed and not to walk”. unruly”, and added: “Fucking old women, that’s why they kill them”. This comment was confirmed by a witness, a classmate of the victim, ALHE, who added to the Prosecutor’s Office that the teacher had been ranting about another person who had filed a complaint against him. “And I’m dean,” she would have said.

Accused of harassment the person in charge of protecting the students from harassment

At the beginning of 2020, UNAM was facing one of the largest student protests due to incidents of sexual abuse and gender-based violence within the university. There were stoppages and sit-ins in a large number of faculties fed up with the attacks. Since the protocol against gender violence was activated in 2016 in the institution, a thousand complaints of sexual abuse and harassment have been filed. López Betancourt led several of those protests and held rallies under the title “For a university free of harassment.” As president of the University Court, he was in charge of protecting the students who suffered this type of violence and of persecuting the aggressors.

In a conference given by the academic on February 11, 2020, MLOS, decided to accuse him out loud of sexual harassment and extortion. After the 2019 incident, the woman had publicly denounced López Betancourt, and he who reacted by suing her for moral damages: she asked him for a million Mexican pesos. He also wanted to take her to the University Court, which he himself presided over, to demand her expulsion from the faculty. The senior official defended himself and accused that everything was a setup to destabilize UNAM.

A few days later, on February 23, the victim met López Betancourt again. This time in the parking lot reserved for teachers, around 11:30. In her accusation, the Prosecutor’s Office has detailed that, in addition to looking at her in a “dirty and lascivious” way, he yelled at her: “Bitch, it’s not clear to you that you’re not going to achieve anything.” Later, she MLOS assures that she was threatened by a man with a gun who told her to be careful because “you don’t play with the doctor.”

Since those episodes, several psychiatrists and psychologists collected by the Prosecutor’s Office affirm that the victim suffers from post-traumatic stress. The prosecutors, in addition, have reminded the judge of the power imbalance between both parties, because while MLOS was at all times a student, López Betancourt was a full-time teacher, technical adviser to the university, president of the University Court and was also dean of the Faculty of Law. These charges of public servant are the ones on which the Prosecutor’s Office is based to request the aggravating circumstance in sexual harassment. “He conceived the victim as a sexual object,” a public ministry agent read this Friday, “and tried to inflict humiliation on the woman.” In this first hearing, the concepts of misogyny, gender violence, sexist language or the right of women to a life free of violence have been repeated.

A friend of senators Miguel Ángel Mancera or Ricardo Monreal, since these accusations were made known, López Betancourt has received the highest decoration of the State of Guerrero, the Sentiments of the Nation award, and the support of the current UNAM rector, Enrique Graue, to whom in 2020 the victim sent a letter detailing the situation of harassment. The dean also served as a private attorney for the former governor of Guerrero, Félix Salgado Macedonio, accused of sexual abuse and assault, in his attempt to prevent the National Electoral Institute (INE) from knocking down his candidacy in the June 6 elections.

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