In a country with high impunity like Venezuela, complaints are usually made, when they are made, on social networks. In recent days, dozens of stories have been published from young women who claim to have been sexually harassed and threatened by another woman. An avalanche of messages, calls and emails ranging from threats to sexual harassment – as can be seen in the screenshots shared by some of the victims who grow after each new thread on X – in addition to stalking their homes are some of the behaviors with those that point to Rebeca García, 33 years old, in different cases that occurred in Caracas at least since 2017. The woman has finally been arrested.
The venting of one of the victims not only uncovered a digital scandal that became a trend, but also the failures in the Venezuelan justice system. “I never thought I would have to do this thread. But I think the time has come: I am tired of Rebeca García’s sexual harassment and I am tired of the law protecting her just because she is a woman. “Rebeca is a woman who has dedicated her life to harassing innocent women,” wrote Andreina De Trindade on her social networks. “This woman has called me from different phone numbers, written on Instagram, she insists on sending me gifts to my work and even left me graffiti.” One day this week, De Trindade received at least 76 compulsive emails from García, according to her count.
Another victim, identified with the user @cocoaguirre, gave one of the most terrifying stories. Without having any relationship or friendship, Rebeca harassed her for more than seven years and one day he entered her residence when she was going through the parking lot gate, she tried to force the door of her car and jumped on him. the hood. “Rebeca’s harassment of me began at the same time as a friend, who had to leave the country due to the situation. “She started by finding out where we lived, our phone numbers, our emails,” she wrote in a post. “The harassment has not stopped, neither physically nor digitally. Rebeca has continued coming incessantly to my building, she has gone to my work, she sends me 20, 30, 40 emails daily. “Obscene emails, violent emails.” As part of her obsession, she ended up publishing a 518-page book on the Amazon platform in the LGBTQ+ Books section titled Book for cocoaguirre.
To the complaints against Rebeca, others began to be added against her brother Francisco García, who allegedly also engages in harassing behavior, such as taking photographs of children in bathrooms that he then uploads to his social networks, something that their family has dismissed when the victims have tried to get closer to stop the harassment, according to the complainants.
It has been common in the victims’ stories that the police do not attend to them. They have crashed time and again against serious institutional failures of the Venezuelan State in the protection of women’s rights, as happened to the Venezuelan singer and influencer Daniela Barranco, who also experienced physical and digital harassment from Rebeca García years ago and He publicly denounced it in a media outlet, because the authorities did not respond either. “They told me that they couldn’t do anything because she was a woman, that an illegal activity or a crime had to occur,” she said now when she sympathized with the other victims.
Violence against women
In the midst of the new avalanche of complaints, two young people went to the Prosecutor’s Office and found a closed door again. The writer and audiovisual producer Diego Vega Mata has told this on his social networks, who in 2020 published the story of a victim with protection of the identities of those involved and accompanied them to the Public Ministry this Wednesday. “The response of the prosecutor on duty was: “There is no law that protects the harassment of women against women.” This is how the authorities respond to people like Rebeca García,” he wrote in X. In parallel, prosecutor Tarek William Saab, who usually mobilizes Given the virality of cases like these, he also published on social networks that he had appointed two prosecutors “to #investigate and #punish the gruesome #facts where the subjects Rebeca García and her brother Francisco García harass multiple victims (Women and Children) ”.
The women who have felt violated by Rebeca García’s behavior have appealed to the Law on the Right of Women to a Life Free of Violence, approved in 2007 and modified in 2014, considered a very advanced norm in the region, although it has once again left on paper due to the large institutional gaps in its implementation. The legislation considers psychological violence, sexual harassment and threats as forms of violence against women punishable by prison sentences. Although it does not stipulate that the perpetrator is exclusively a man, justice officials have given it biased interpretations that leave the victims vulnerable. It is the same bias that makes access to justice for victims of gender violence a very steep path.
Prosecutor Saab has also approached the complaint, leaving aside the parameters of specific protection for women established by this law and has ordered the arrest of the García brothers for crimes of promoting or inciting hatred, exhibition of pornography of children and adolescents and gathering, while the wave of complaints and indignation continues to grow in X.
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