“I didn't want him to kiss me. She did the same. I didn't want him to touch me. She did the same. I didn't want him to penetrate me. “He did it the same way,” said the public letter with which a niece of the then Argentine senator José Alperovich denounced him for sexual abuse at the end of 2019. The accusation had a great impact in Argentina because he was one of the most influential politicians in the north of the country. country, three times governor of the province of Tucumán for Peronism. More than four years later, this Monday Alperovich sat in the dock for the first time. The former governor, 68, appeared at the first hearing of the trial in Buenos Aires accompanied by his children and denied all the accusations against him.
“The test is to tell the truth,” the Tucumán leader told the media before entering the Oral Criminal Court. Inside, he once again reiterated his desire for the truth to be known before Judge José María Ramos Padilla: “This killed me and I want justice.”
Alperovich must answer for three cases of sexual abuse – two attempted – and six cases of sexual violence aggravated by sexual violence that allegedly occurred between 2017 and 2018 in Buenos Aires and the province of Tucumán. The complainant, whose identity is being kept confidential, was Alperovich's personal assistant in the Senate at the time. Today she is 33 years old.
The public complaint forced Alperovich to step aside and brought to light situations of harassment that several women had suffered with him. The best known is that of a Gaceta TV journalist who interviewed him in 2019. “I love this girl, she is the profile that I like,” Alperovich says in front of the cameras. at the beginning of the note. Shortly after, he assures that if he were not so busy with politics he would dedicate his time “to looking more calmly at this beauty” and denigrates the journalist's work by telling her in a mocking tone that it is not possible for him to “get upset” and that he reminds her to his lady.
For the Prosecutor's Office, Alperovich “abused a relationship of dependency, power and authority” to perpetrate the crimes of which he is accused. In a document of more than 400 pages, the prosecution also highlighted that psychological tests confirmed that the complainant suffered traumatic consequences and psychological damage compatible with sexual violence.
“It was proven how the accused, using his physical force, exercising intimidating abuse of power and gender violence, reduced the victim under his control, and made her a mere object of sexual satisfaction, of objectification, subjecting her in a violent, outrageous and degrading, doing so over the course of a little more than three months,” the prosecution said in the indictment.
Around 80 witnesses will be called to testify during the trial. Alperovich faces up to 15 years in prison, but is confident of his acquittal. His defense is in the hands of the legal firm of the current Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona. The complainant did not want to give statements before the start of the trial.
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