The Oral Criminal Court (TOP) of Temuco, delivered this Saturday morning its verdict of the investigation against Martin Pradenas Durr declaring him guilty of rape and sexual abuse of the 20-year-old Antonia Barra. Thus, he declared a conviction against him for all the crimes that the Prosecutor’s Office initially charged him with: two crimes of rape and five of sexual abuse perpetrated between 2010 and 2019 in Temuco and Pucón.
Judge Leonel Torres Labbé -in charge of reading and drafting the ruling- warned the need in these cases to judge with a gender perspective. The judges described as key having heard the victim’s version “that transcended her physical existence”, in relation to audios sent by Antonia Barra to her friend Consuelo Uribe since these “constituted probative material” to deliver the verdict.
Pradenas has been fulfilling preventive detention in the Valdivia Penitentiary Compliance Center since July 2020 and the Public Ministry aspires to obtain against the accused sentences totaling 41 years in prison.
The judgmentas reported this Saturday, will be announced the Friday, August 26 at 2:00 p.m.
The July 21, 2020 had been formalized as a perpetrator of sexual assaults against six women between 13 and 21 years old, acts committed between November 2010 and September 2019 in Temuco and Pucón.
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The formalization that year -prior to which Pradenas had released a video claiming to be innocent- was followed by more than one million people who connected to the Internet channels of the Judiciary. The figure broke a record, since never before in the country had that number of people been registered following a process. That day, in addition, in different parts of the country there were cacerolazos in memory of Antonia Barra.
The investigation originated after the suicide of the 20-year-old accused of having been raped by Pradenas in a cabin in Pucon on September 18, 2019. The university student told her partner and some close friends what had happened. After her death, the October 13, 2019the The family found messages on the young woman’s phone that alluded to the fact.
The June 14, 2022 the trial started and on Thursday of this week, after 37 hearings in the Court of Oral Criminal Trial of Temuco Closing arguments were made.
“Using the same way of operating, taking advantage of a situational, contextual vulnerability that each of the victims experienced, he sexually assaulted them on different occasions. Throughout this trial It was shown that this same way of operating evolved over time in the sense that this situation of vulnerability was taken advantage of by the accused in order to attack them in an untimely manner.taking advantage of the fact that the victims were paralyzed, shocked, also taking advantage of their greater physical capacity”, affirmed the prosecutor of Temuco, Miguel Angel Rojas that day.
For his part, the Pradenas defense attorney, Gaspar CalderónHe said that he hoped his client would be acquitted. “Evidently what happened during these 30 sessions is very different from what was offered in the accusation in all its planes”he pointed.
On Friday, in the last hearing, when Judge Roberto Herrera offered the floor, Pradenas He preferred to avail himself of his right to remain silent. “I am going to reserve myself, sir magistrate”said.
After this Saturday’s verdict, the sentencing reading, which has a deadline of August 26.
That July 2020, the imputation of charges against Pradenas was in charge of the prosecutor Red. As the persecutor explained, it all started in the discotheque ex Sala Murano in Pucón, where Antonia arrived with a friend and her partner. Her partner reported that, according to a later account by Antonia, Pradenas approached her after harassing her during the night, until he managed to get her to leave the discotheque with her.
Rojas showed the court a video taken by security cameras from a supermarket, where the young woman is seen walking with difficulty next to the accused, who in the parking lot would have performed oral sex on her against her will. “They stayed in a corner where the boy wanted to be intimate with the girl, she was very drunk and it was obvious that she did not want to have sex”declared Karina Ratiman, in charge of the security cameras of the supermarket.
The prosecutor pointed out that at 7:30 the next day, Consuelo Uribe -Antonia’s companion- contacted Emilio Boric (a friend who had stayed with Antonia at the discotheque) and he told her that he was no longer with her. Then, around 9:50 am, it was Antonia who “called Consuelo upset and crying,” the prosecutor said. The persecutor added that by WhatsApp Antonia told her friend “toy raped (sic)” and that Pradenas had locked her up. He also sent him the location where he was, which was a cabin that Pradenas had rented with some friends.
According to Rojas, Consuelo and her partner went to look for Antonia, who looked very upset when she left.
Barra lived with her parents in Temuco. She was the fourth of five children (three women and one man) and studied commercial engineering at Universidad Mayor of his city. After the death of the young woman, her father, Alejandro Barra, received a diploma that distinguished her daughter for the second year in a row on the honor roll for her good grades.
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The student’s suicide mobilized the regional capital of La Araucanía and generated high public expectation. The plaintiff attorney pointed out in the aforementioned hearing that Pradenas entered one of the multiple social network and WhatsApp groups that had been created requesting “Justice for Antonia” using a false name to obtain information. He also charged that the defendant had deleted photos from his computer and that Pradenas’s mother broke her cell phone.
In February 2021, the cell phone that they had supposedly destroyed was found. Following this discovery, the investigation was expanded. In the request to increase the term Judge Juan Mauricio Poblete Erices accepted the request of the persecuting entity and reported that “as a result of the prosecutor’s investigation, it was possible to seize the phone of the accused Pradenas, which had allegedly been destroyed according to what was indicated by the mother of the accused, cell phone that is being examined as it is linked to the investigation of one of the victims in the case (…)”.
Antonia’s case caused other complaints against Pradenas to come to light for which he was later formalized.
In the first of crimes charged for sexual abuse Pradenas was accused of groping the victim with the initials PVCQ in 2010, who was then 16 years old. This, inside her private home, in Temuco.
The second act of sexual abuse, also occurred in the regional capital of La Araucanía, two years later -in 2012- pointed to acts of sexual significance and relevance to the detriment of the victim of initials TVBR, also 16 years old at the time.
In the third, he was accused of carrying out acts of sexual significance and relevance to the detriment of the victim of initials CPCU, who was 13 years old at the time. The events occurred in the period between December 2012 and January 2013; also in the city of Temuco.
The Public Ministry also stated that in April 2014 Pradenas abused another victim, initials VFLR, 19 years old, in the same city, executing acts of sexual significance and relevance against him.
On November 24, 2018, according to the prosecution, the first crime of rape charged to the accused occurred, the day he sexually assaulted FVMO, 20 years old at the time of the events, taking advantage of his status of drunkenness
In the case of Antonia Barra, for the Public Ministry, a the crime of sexual abuse of a person over 14 years of age and the crime of rape of a person over 14 years of age.