On Saturday, August 6 at the Oral Criminal Court (TOP) of Temuco, the magistrate Leonel Torres Labbé delivered the guilty verdict against Martín Pradenas for a series of crimes of sexual connotation that were imputed to him, among them, the crimes of rape and sexual abuse of Antonia Barra.
Thus, the defendant was declared guilty for two crimes of rape and five of sexual abuse between 2010 and 2019 in Temuco and Pucón. The next August 26 at 2:00 p.m., the sentence will be delivered that Pradenas must comply with, which until now -and since July 2020- has been in preventive detention at the Valdivia Prison Compliance Center.
The minutes of deliberation of the decision unanimously agreed by the judges Roberto Herrera Olivos, room president; Wilfred Ziehlmann Zamorano, member judge; and Leonel Torres Labbé, drafting judge; and then drafted -and read- in the ruling by Judge Torres Labbé, it was decided after an oral trial of 32 days of litigation.
Here are the eight keys that delivered the verdict of the Pradenas case presented in the minutes of deliberation:
1. More than 42 witnesses and 17 experts from the plaintiff: The prosecution and the plaintiffs, to base their accusations against Pradenas, presented the statements of 42 witnesses and 17 experts on the witness stand. For its part, the defense summoned 8 witnesses and 3 experts.
2. Gender perspective: “Judging from a gender perspective is not an issue unknown to the court, but rather, on the contrary, it is considered as a method or methodological tool that allows gender inequalities to be eradicated”, indicate the actors of the decision stage in the deliberation record.
3. WhatsApp messages as crucial evidence: After the death of Antonia Barra, the main evidentiary weighting of the prosecutor’s thesis was based on the victim’s own account, whose version of the events were reported in different WhatsApp audios sent to her friend and her ex-partner about what happened in 2019. , from the extraction of cell phone data, messages and telephone traffic.
4. Psychological profile of the victims: The testimony of witnesses referred to the psychological impact present in the victims referred to their own symptoms in case of sexual crimes, either through testimonies, diagnoses or expert opinions.
5. “Safe place” after the Antonia Barra story: According to the minutes, in “In all cases, the unfortunate death of the ARBP victim marked a safe place like many of the other victims, they pointed out on stands, to be able to tell what happened without fear.
“Which makes sense, since there are unfortunate common factors: what happened was normalized, it was thought that it was normal to receive that type of touching, it was estimated that no one would believe them, bearing in mind that the accused was a popular person among his peers, who would blame them for being exposed to such situations; All of this is a reflection of a society with serious gender stereotypes,” they add.
6. Multiplicity of evidence: During the trial, both the Public Ministry and the plaintiff exposed a multiplicity of material evidence, videos, audios and similar skills, which together with the concordance in the statements of the witnesses could form a conviction in the Court to prove the crimes for which which Pradenas Dürr was sentenced. The review of cameras, the analysis of files extracted from electronic devices, the telephone traffic, the psychological tests that correlate with the emotional affectation, the psychic damage described by the AB victim and the suicide he subsequently committed.
7. Similar modus operandi: One of the characteristics that is repeated the most in the events denounced by the victims are the situations of vulnerability that were taken advantage of by the accused in order to attack them in an untimely manner, taking advantage of the fact that they were paralyzed, shocked, also taking advantage of their greater physical capacity. , using force and acting against the will of those affected to perpetrate the crimes.
8. Common symptoms among victims: The magistrates, in the verdict, also realized that the common stories of the complainants were supported by skills that reflected symptoms of their own that occur in the victims of sexual crimes and the degree of affectation of the same, within which the post-traumatic stress symptoms and feelings of guilt, which would be linked to the experience of sexual transgression; in addition to states of anxiety, feelings of hostility, persecution, affections that initially most of the victims would keep for themselves or for their closest group, which was considered consistent with the psychological functioning of each one.