Colombian prosecutors announced that they had managed to persuade a guarantee control judge in Bogotá to hold the alleged abuser of 17-year-old Hilary Castro in a prison center, which happened on October 31 at one of the Transmilenio bus stations. “In addition to the Transmilenio video cameras, the public prosecutor’s office also has the spoken portrait made on the basis of witnesses as essential evidence,” says a statement from the public prosecutor’s office. “This individual has been charged with the felony of forcible sexual assault in competition with aggravated and aggravated theft. The accused did not accept the allegations. The man identified himself as Juan Pablo González Gómez.
Prosecutors responded this Sunday after Castro, 17, took to his social media to criticize the lack of speed in the justice system when he went to file the complaint this week. As he approached the first point of immediate attention, “they told us it couldn’t be done there because it was for adults.” Castro then moved on to another point of attention, which was pointed out to him in the first but in this second “it is not possible because the person who abused me is an adult”. They brought her back to the first, although they warned her that after 5pm they will not receive any more complaints “and that my case is not an emergency”. When he called the Transmilenio police line they said he was off duty.
Exhausted by “courts harassing everyone again,” Castro decided to post her complaint on her Instagram account. His story went viral. Prosecutors then announced that they had hired two prosecutors specializing in sex crimes to investigate the case together with teams from the Technical Investigative Corps and the Sijín Police. TransMilenium He assured that he was conducting internal investigations to provide input to the relevant authorities. In four days, the public prosecutor’s office arrested the alleged perpetrator.
According to Bogotá’s Security Secretariat, more than 5,000 sex crimes have been recorded in the capital so far in 2022, and few are moving at the same rate. Castro’s fall would have been slower if it hadn’t provoked the outrage of hundreds of citizens on social media and on the streets. After learning about the complaint, feminist groups mobilized in the city and some people caused damage to Transmilenio’s facilities. A United Nations survey shows that 83.9% of women say they feel very unsafe or unsafe when using Transmilenio. 38.4% chose not to use these buses for fear of sexual violence.
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