Justice will condemn the sexual attacker of journalist Vanesa Restrepo

Five years ago, journalist Vanesa Restrepo criminally denounced her co-worker at the newspaper El Colombiano Juan Esteban Vásquez Fernández, who held the position of macro editor, for sexually assaulting her. The events occurred in 2019, when a group of co-workers met after work. At the end of the night, Vásquez offered Restrepo a ride to an ATM, because she had run out of money to order a taxi. But he deviated from the route and offered to stay at her house. And, there, taking advantage of her trust and the fact that she had fallen asleep in another room, he sexually assaulted her.

This Thursday, in the first instance, a judge ruled in favor of Vanesa Restrepo, ratifying that the sexual assault did occur and announced that Juan Esteban Vásquez Fernández will be sentenced. The amount of the penalty will be known on August 29 at 4:00 p.m. At the hearing, the judge affirmed that the complainant’s story is coherent and consistent, that all the facts were proven and the psychiatric evaluations showed that Vanessa suffered the symptoms and emotional consequences that victims of sexual violence normally suffer.

Read here: Constitutional Court ruled in favor of journalist who was the victim of sexual harassment

Juan Esteban Vásquez’s defense, for his part, said that the sexual assault did not occur, but did not prove it. The complainant’s lawyer also mentioned that Vanesa had to sacrifice his job, in which he was happy, resign from it, and submit to revictimization, due to the sexual assault and the actions of El Colombiano. His life has undergone several changes that have brought him pain. For now, the first instance decision will condemn Vásquez, but he will appeal the ruling, so there will be a second instance.

After learning of the sentence, Vanesa Restrepo thanked the people who surrounded her these five years, said that the ruling restored faith in institutions and justice and motivated journalists to demand their right to live a life free of violence and stereotypes of gender. “Enough of judging the victims and remaining indifferent to the perpetrators (…) I embrace every journalist colleague who has had the courage to raise their voice in the face of normalized violence and has demanded a change in the face of the false neutrality with which “The directives of many media outlets continue to be supported,” stated the reporter.

Vanesa Restrepo has been the only journalist in Colombia to expose before the Constitutional Court the violence suffered by women in the media. Her case is historic because, for the first time, the high court ruled on this matter and set precedents in 2021 on how the media should act in these cases and what their obligations are to eradicate gender-based violence, which is not outside these companies.

Read here: “The newspaper was no longer a safe space for me”: Vanesa Restrepo

The Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has said that in the world of work, sexual violence against women journalists covers a set of behaviors, from unwanted comments or gestures, jokes, brief physical contact, to sexual assault. . The most frequent forms of violence are verbal abuse (63%), psychological abuse (41%), economic exploitation (21%) and physical violence (11%). And they are exercised both by people outside the workplace (sources, politicians, readers, or other listeners) and by bosses or superiors. Likewise, 44% of the women surveyed indicated having suffered cyberbullying.

In the case of Vanesa Restrepo, she told her employer, the newspaper The Colombianthe sexual violence that her co-worker and macro editor Juan Esteban Vásquez had committed, and asked for measures to not have contact with him and feel safer, since the interaction with her attacker caused her fear, anguish and anxiety, emotions that are common in survivors of sexual violence, especially when they come into contact with their attackers.

The ColombianHowever, according to the Constitutional Court, it did not act with due diligence, re-victimized Vanesa and did not provide her with a clear route to provide her with advice and accompany her in the complaint and healing process. For example, the director of Human Resources of he, Beatriz Eugenia López Correa, called her to her office, asked the victim how she was dressed on the day of the attack, if she had drank alcohol, why she got into a car with the aggressor and if he had also drank alcohol. Questions that only put the burden on the victim and not the perpetrator, and that go against all human rights standards and a gender perspective.

The journalist was forced to resign from her job. “I chose to do it this way because it was precisely in Human Resources where I felt most re-victimized by the head of that area, Beatriz López, after reporting that I was a victim of sexual abuse by a colleague and co-worker. In two private meetings, Mrs. López questioned my wardrobe, why I went out, consumed liquor, agreed to get in a car ‘with a man who was not my partner’; among other sexist and re-victimizing statements such as that “we (women) have to take care of ourselves and make ourselves respected,” Vanesa told the Constitutional Court, adding that the newspaper was not a safe place nor did it have protocols for the prevention and attention of harassment. and sexual abuse.

The Colombian, for its part, alleged that the conduct reported by the journalist had not occurred in the workplace or in the newspaper’s facilities and that its Workplace Coexistence Committee had not received complaints related to the possible commission of workplace harassment behaviors that threatened the sexual freedom. This is because a group of journalists from the newspaper signed a letter supporting Vanesa, in which they also expressed that these behaviors of sexual violence were common in the newsroom and that they needed a protocol.

The Constitutional Court ruled in favor of Vanesa Restrepo and against The Colombian and made it clear that the media have the obligation to prevent, investigate, prosecute and punish violence and/or discrimination against women for reasons of gender. And he ordered the newspaper to create a protocol that would ensure victims a clear route to report and receive care and that would have as its central axes immediate care or containment, psychosocial care and legal advice.

The high court added that it is a gender stereotype to ask women about the way they are dressed or whether they have drank alcohol or gotten into the car of a co-worker and former boss or even whether they have slept in their apartment, because it calls into question judge the seriousness of the complaint and try to blame the victim for the attack.

Furthermore, the court explained that guaranteeing the presumption of innocence of the alleged aggressor did not prevent and, on the contrary, required offering the journalist an appropriate means of support that respected her rights to continue with her work while the complaint filed with the authorities was resolved. judicial authorities.

There was no doubt, according to the high constitutional court, that The Colombian was obliged to take timely, suitable and effective accompanying actions aimed at preserving Vanessa’s dignity and privacy, without engaging in humiliating and/or re-victimizing practices, or calling into question her credibility.

Therefore, it considered that the newspaper violated the journalist’s rights and ordered it to implement a pedagogical policy to train on women’s human rights, adopt a protocol to address violence, reinstate Vanessa and pay her the salaries that she stopped receiving for his resignation. The complainant, however, did not agree to return to the newsroom, because she considers it an unsafe space for women. She decided to co-found her own media outlet in Medellín, The Armadillo.