Sexual abuse cases hit Peronism. A month after the Justice sentenced the former governor of the northern province of Tucumán, José Alperovich, to 16 years in prison for rape, another court confirmed this Tuesday the prosecution of one of the strong men of the party in the province of Buenos Aires, Fernando Espinoza. The current mayor of La Matanza, the most populated district on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, is one step away from going to trial for the alleged sexual abuse perpetrated against Melody Raskauskas in 2021. Espinoza must also answer for the crime of disobedience to a court order for allegedly failing to comply with the prohibition of approaching the victim and having tried to convince her to withdraw the complaint. In its ruling, the Criminal Chamber ratified the seizure of 1.5 million pesos (about 1,600 dollars at the official exchange rate) on the political leader’s assets.
“This is excellent news,” Raskauskas told local media when she learned of the prosecution. She said that since she filed the complaint with the Domestic Violence Office in June 2021, she had to change her address and live almost in seclusion out of fear.
According to the complaint, she started working for Espinoza through her ex-partner, Gustavo Cilia, without having previous experience as a secretary or signing any contract. She explained that Espinoza showed up at her house three times and it was on the last of them, on May 20, 2021, when the abuse occurred.
According to the complainant’s account, Espinoza had invited himself to dinner and when he finished he pretended to be cramped in order to ask her for a massage. She refused and asked him to go home to rest, but he refused and began to unbutton his shirt. When she insisted that he leave, the accused grabbed her tightly and ended up on top of her. “Stay calm, I always wanted you, everything will be fine,” she remembers him saying, while he tried to undress her by force and pull down her underwear. Faced with the resistance he encountered, he finally gave up, Raskauskas said. “Okay, that’s it, it’s all over, I’m leaving, that’s it, don’t worry. You’re an idiot, you don’t know what you’re missing, but okay, it’s up to you,” Espinoza responded.
The defendant admits having been at Raskauskas’s house, but denies the accusations. He maintains that he is the victim of an illegal intelligence operation planned to harm both him and the Justicialist Party, since the complaint was filed on the eve of the 2021 legislative elections. “We cannot fail to indicate that Rakauskas’s surprise and premeditated appearance occurred on the eve of the elections,” says Espinoza’s defense. The Municipality of La Matanza has counterattacked with a criminal complaint against Rakauskas for the alleged commission of the crimes of money laundering and illegal espionage.
The courts question Espinoza’s defense. In her indictment, Judge María Fabiana Galetti said that “the victim’s account of having suffered such indecent touching of her body without authorization is supported by the conclusions of the specialists in the field who interviewed her during the investigation, giving an account of the effects produced on her by what happened.”
The complainant also accused her ex-partner of having tried to bribe her with a real estate deal in exchange for withdrawing the complaint. She described this proposal as “cynical” and threw him out of her house.
While Peronism remains silent, the opposition is pushing for Espinoza to be removed from office until the case is resolved. “It is extremely serious that in this case, where there is semi-full proof of guilt, and given the characteristics of the office he holds, he continues to exercise his office without any kind of qualms and with the consent of the political spectrum he represents,” argued Deputy Silvana Giudici, of Propuesta Republicana (Pro), the party founded by former President Mauricio Macri.
The case is advancing at a time marked by high-profile convictions in similar cases. In early June, the Brazilian courts sentenced actor Juan Darthés to six years in prison for raping his colleague Thelma Fardin during the last stop of a regional tour of a teen series. Darthés was 45 years old when he abused Fardin, then 16, in a hotel in Managua. Days later, an Argentine court sentenced Alperovich to 16 years in prison and a life ban from holding public office.
Journalist Pedro Brieger, accused of harassment
The allegations that have so far shaken the world of politics and cinema have reached the media in the last week. Journalist Alejandro Alfie denounced in X (formerly Twitter) five cases of women harassed by journalist and professor specializing in international relations Pedro Brieger. Within hours, new accusations were added and on Tuesday a report was presented to the Senate with 19 testimonies that recounted scenes of harassment perpetrated with total impunity over 30 years.
The complainants accused Brieger of exposing his genitals and masturbating in front of them without their consent, of engaging in sexual conversations in work and academic settings, and of cornering them when they were alone with him in places where they could not ask for help. “We had to abandon our theses, move, quit jobs, stop going to conferences with the sole purpose of not seeing him again. He, on the other hand, traveled, received awards, interviewed leaders, achieved international prestige,” the complainants said in the report presented by the Argentine Journalists group. The victims demand a public apology from Brieger, which has not yet been forthcoming. The accused has also remained silent in response to inquiries made by this newspaper.
“It is very important to have support. At times we thought it would never come,” journalist Agustina Kämpfer told the media. She was the first to speak out against Brieger. “He is a stalker,” she said on television in 2010. It was 14 years before other women dared to speak out against him.
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