“I didn't want him to kiss me. He did the same thing. I didn't want him to touch me. He did the same thing. I didn't want him to penetrate me. “He did the same thing,” says the public letter with which a niece of the then Argentine senator José Alperovich denounced him for sexual abuse at the end of 2019. He was an influential politician in the north of the country. Country, three times governor of the province of Tucumán for Peronism. More than four years later, Alperovich sat in the dock for the first time this Monday. The former governor, 68, appeared at the first hearing of the trial in Buenos Aires accompanied by his children and denied all the allegations against him.
“The test is to tell the truth,” the Tucumán leader told the media before entering the oral criminal court. Inside, he reiterated his desire for the truth to come to light before Judge José María Ramos Padilla: “This killed me and I want justice.”
Alperovich faces three counts of sexual abuse – two of which were attempted – and six counts of sexual violence aggravated by sexual violence that allegedly took place between 2017 and 2018 in Buenos Aires and Tucumán province. The complainant, whose identity is being kept confidential, was Alperovich's personal assistant in the Senate at the time. Today he is 33 years old.
The public complaint forced Alperovich to resign and brought to light harassment situations that several women had endured with him. The most famous is that of a Gaceta TV journalist who interviewed him in 2019. “I love this girl, she is the profile I like,” Alperovich tells the cameras at the start of the note. Shortly afterwards, he asserts that if he were not so busy with politics, he would spend his time “looking more calmly at this beauty” and denigrates the journalist's work, telling her in a mocking tone that it is him it is not possible to “look at this beauty”. upset” and that he reminds her of his wife.
For the prosecution, Alperovich “abused a relationship of dependency, power and authority” to commit the crimes he was accused of. In a document of more than 400 pages, the prosecutor's office also emphasized that psychological tests confirmed that the complainant suffered traumatic consequences and psychological damage consistent with sexual violence.
“It is proven how the defendant, through the use of his physical violence, through intimidating abuse of power and gender-based violence, brought the victim under his control and turned her into a mere object of sexual gratification, of objectification, subjecting her to a violent, outrageous and inhumane situation.” “Degrading, over a period of just over three months,” says the prosecution’s indictment.
Around 80 witnesses will be called as witnesses during the trial. Alperovich faces up to 15 years in prison, but he is confident he will be acquitted. His defense is in the hands of the law firm of the current Minister of Justice, Mariano Cúneo Libarona. The complainant did not want to comment before the trial began.