When Elizabeth Otavalo heard her daughter’s killer sentenced to 34 years and eight months, she felt she had found justice and felt at peace. But she says it wasn’t: “It hurts to know that my daughter was a transaction and ever since her husband killed her at the police academy, I’ve been in pain, and more pain, and it doesn’t stop.” María Belén Bernal, a 34-year-old lawyer, entered the Quito Police Academy after midnight on Sunday, September 11, 2022 after her husband, Lieutenant Germán Cáceres, called him. He went to his room in the prison official building and did not come out. According to the autopsy, María Belén died of strangulation and asphyxiation.
His body was found after a ten-day search involving his mother and relatives. “They began the search four days after my daughter’s disappearance. I had to demand that a multidisciplinary and interagency team be formed, including the firefighters and the community,” says Otavalo, who walked through quarries, ravines and garbage dumps in search of her daughter. By that time, his son-in-law and the main suspect in the disappearance of María Belén had already fled the country.
“I started fighting with generals who would pound me on the table and tell me what else I wanted, that they were supposedly doing everything they could to look for my daughter,” Otavalo recalls. “I told them I wanted to plan,” he adds. Before the search began on the tenth day, police were already with a prosecutor at Cerro de Casitagua, about 20 minutes from the school, an area Cáceres knew well, having served as an instructor at the facility and taking students through the school led this area.
Posters with the photo of María Belén Bernal placed in front of the General Command in Quito during a protest on September 21. Dolores Ochoa (AP)
The investigating police had managed to close the search area by tracing a call Cáceres received on the night of September 11 when she was burying María Belén in the Casitagua. However, little progress has been made. “The background to this is things that I don’t understand and they won’t happen to me until I know the whole truth,” says María Belén’s mother, who accused the police of acting with esprit de corps to protect the institution.
The details of how they found the body’s location were not disclosed in the femicide trial, which ended with the maximum sentence of 34 years and eight months in prison for Germán Cáceres, while Lieutenant Alfonso C., who was in charge of the family’s defense He was sentenced to 22 years in prison on charges of failing to help María Belén, and the judges declared him innocent. The Ecuadorian Public Prosecutor’s Office opened another case of procedural fraud to investigate the actions of the National Police in the case. “They say no one in the building heard my daughter’s screams, and the evidence is there, she asked for help,” says Otavalo.
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He refers to an audio recording of about three minutes made by María Belén on the phone, in which Cáceres talks to her about infidelity and asks her for help several times. The evidence was made public and it was a new blow to María Belén’s family, because “this audio recording was in custody and was only opened for hearing by the judges, they did great harm to my grandson and it shows that they did not.” do.” “I don’t care about anything,” says Otavalo.
Former police officer Germán Cáceres is escorted at Quito Airport after being deported from Colombia on January 3, 2023. Presidency of Ecuador (AFP)
It was a road full of obstacles, says the mother, on which the victims are the ones who have to defend themselves against the system: “They protect the femicide, they allow him to take part in the hearings via video conference, they guard him and …” If they don’t want to, they don’t speak because they retreat into silence,” claims Elizabeth. “While victims are attacked when we protest, we must respond to everything. I had to listen to what they say about my daughter, why she ended up going to school at midnight because she felt like it!” she adds.
Interior Minister Juan Zapata admits that the protocols for checking entrances and exits and the reports they should have made were not respected and that for this reason 95% of the staff on duty present on the day of the attack were not complied with crimes were dismissed. “That served as an experience, from many mistakes that were made there, so that it never happens again,” Zapata told EL PAÍS, but also defended the police officers: “You can’t generalize to the 52,000 police officers.”
However, after María Belén’s femicide, two more complaints of sexual violence were made public within this facility. The last case is also being investigated by the Ecuadorian Public Prosecutor’s Office. It happened on May 21 and the subject was arrested in the act of sexually abusing eight students when they entered the room for a “pyjama check.”
At the Quito Higher Police Academy, the same uniformed officers have dubbed the dormitory building for the training officers the “Castle of Grayskull,” the source of the He-Man comic’s powers. One of the motions put forward by the Bernal family defense was to close the Police High School and completely restructure it, but the motion was not granted. It was also not agreed what should happen to the building, whose demolition Guillermo Lasso had ordered after a legal opinion. “He needs to get back to normal and consult with the President if he sticks with this decision or reinstates it because you can’t have an accessible building that meets the needs of the National Police,” responds Zapata.
Women during a demonstration in Quito on September 21, 2022 for the death of Maria Belén Bernal. Dolores Ochoa (AP)
The president’s word was also not kept when he ordered that “Generals Freddy Goyes and Giovanni Ponce be expelled from the institution immediately,” Lasso told a national radio and television station.
The Interior Minister assures that the police force has “changed a lot” since María Belén’s crime. “We graduated 391 second lieutenants with a curriculum focused on strengthening gender rights and equality,” and it noted that with any promotion it is imperative “that there are no complaints of domestic violence or rights against women.” , added Zapata.
For Elizabeth Otavalo, the fight for justice and redress does not end with the verdict. “With my daughter’s case, we are showing that it can be tried in eight months, that it can be denounced.” from which he was released. He also does not rule out suing his house in the Inter-American Court: “You can not forget where my daughter was killed, the state must answer for not acting.”
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