The three-time governor and former national senator of Tucumán, José Alperovich, was found guilty of raping and sexually abusing his second niece on several occasions while she served as his secretary “in all cases, mediating intimidation, abuse of a relationship of dependency, power and authority.” Judge Juan Ramos Padilla, in charge of TOC 29, began reading the historic verdict this Tuesday at 8:10 p.m. in a room filled with journalists and television cameras, which highlighted the police custody imposed on the former president a week ago. The magistrate considered all the facts reported by the young woman to be proven. Who was the owner and lord of the province and amassed an enormous fortune, listened to the sentence with a grim expression, his eyes half-closed and a small medal with inscriptions in Hebrew pressed between the fingers of his left hand, which accompanied him from the beginning of the oral trial and public, on February 5. At one point, he was seen wiping away some tears. Ramos Padilla ordered that he be detained immediately and transferred to a federal penitentiary unit. Alperovich spent his first night behind bars. The sentence, the judge read, will expire on June 17, 2040.
It is assumed that his defense, led by lawyer Augusto Garrido, from the firm of Justice Minister Mariano Cúneo Libarona, will appeal the ruling and that in the next few hours, probably this Wednesday, he will ask for his release. The foundations of the ruling will not be known until Friday, August 16 at 3:30 p.m.: they will be communicated to the parties electronically, the judge announced. Alperovich will turn 70 in April next year and could then request house arrest.
The sentence almost coincides with what the Prosecutor’s Office had requested, which was a sentence of 16 and a half years in prison and can be read as a strong message to society against the impunity of such a powerful character, who operated as a feudal lord in his territory. Furthermore, the ruling endorses the importance of the victim’s word as evidence in cases of sexual violence.
The complaint had requested 22 years in prison and the defense, the acquittal of Alperovich with the argument that everything was a cause armed by his political adversaries.
What does the sentence say?
In the ruling, the magistrate considered the 9 reported facts to be proven. Ramos Padilla found Alperovich “criminally responsible for the crimes of simple sexual abuse repeated on three occasions (facts 1, 3 and 5 of the referral to trial), the last two committed as an attempt, and six other incidents of sexual violence.” aggravated by having had carnal access through vaginal, anal and oral routes, by having introduced parts of his body, his penis through the three routes and his fingers in the first of them (facts 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 ), in all cases, mediating intimidation, abuse of a relationship of dependency, power and authority, all of these in real competition with each other.
Secondly, the judge decreed special perpetual disqualification from holding public office at the national, provincial and municipal levels, as the prosecutor’s office had requested.
He also ordered the arrest, with preventive detention, of Alperovich and his immediate transfer to a Federal Penitentiary Service prison. Also, he ordered that DNA samples be extracted to be incorporated into the National Registry of Genetic Data linked to Crimes against Sexual Integrity.
In the sentencing, Ramos Padilla also ordered that the statements be extracted to investigate three witnesses presented by the defense for false testimony. This is Manuel Frías, who worked as a waiter for Alperovih; Víctor Hugo Decataldo, a transportation businessman who also had a romantic relationship with Sara, one of the former president’s daughters, and David Cayatta, the leader’s former driver and custodian.
It also ordered that the filming of the testimonies of the expert witnesses, presented by the defense, the psychologists Liliana Sedler and Paula Sánchez Ayala, and copies of their expert reports presented in the file be sent to the Ministry of Health of the Nation, “to “The purposes are that, through the corresponding body, they evaluate the ethical conduct of the professionals, in accordance with what arises from the respective recitals.”
In the ruling, the judge recognized “the right of MFL, the complainant, regarding comprehensive reparation under the terms of art. 29, inc. 2 of the CPN, according to the considerations formulated in the sentence.” It was a request from the Prosecutor’s Office in its argument. The complainant did not file a civil suit. But the judge recognizes his right to receive compensation – once the sentence is final – for the damage caused by the abuse.
“She is very moved and relieved”
“We are really very satisfied with the sentencing sentence handed down by Judge Ramos Padilla, which puts things in their place and comes to do justice, in line with what the prosecutor Sandro Abraldes and we had requested in the arguments,” they transmitted to through a press release the lawyers of the complaint, Pablo Rovatti and Carolina Cymerman, from the Legal Assistance and Sponsorship Program for Victims of Crimes of the General Defender of the Nation.
“We spoke with MFL, who is very moved and relieved, because she feels that after five years since she reported the abuses and after having suffered a campaign to delegitimize her word, she was able to obtain what she has always sought, which is not charges, not fame, but rather his healing through justice, as he told us in the first hearing of this trial where he gave his testimony for hours,” the statement continues. Alperovich had witnessed the complainant’s father’s second marriage. He and Alperovich are first cousins.
Rovatti – who was not at the hearing because he is on leave – and Cymerman highlighted that “this sentence” means “one more milestone in the fight of victims of sexual violence against the impunity of the most powerful.” And they highlighted “the work of national justice in this case.”
The victim followed the reading of the verdict and sentence virtually.
Minutes after the historic ruling, Tucumán journalist Milagro Mariona, spokesperson for MFL, was surprised by the judge’s decision to order the immediate arrest of the convicted man. “The judge has set an example and set a precedent. We didn’t know what was going to happen today, we trusted in Justice,” but “we believed that the judge was going to be softer; “It was a very important message against impunity,” she assessed. She also said that the complainant “is satisfied that the judge has found truth in her words and that is what she asked for from the moment she faced this process.” And when asked about what this result of the trial meant for the feminist movement, she responded: “It is very important.” And she added: “When you ask where the feminists are… here we are, accompanying the victims.”
Reading the ruling
In the hearing room of TOC 29, located on Paraguay Street at 1500 CABA, were his four children and other close friends. His wife, former senator Beatriz Rojkes – who was president of the Justicialist Party in her province and became, as of November 30, 2011, the first female provisional president of the Senate, second in the presidential succession, with Cristina Kirchner as head of State – followed the reading of the ruling remotely.
Upon hearing the sentence to 16 years in prison, one of the daughters burst into tears, holding her sister’s hand and curled up on her knees.
The oral and public trial began on February 5 and over four months, more than 70 witnesses testified.
This Tuesday’s hearing was scheduled for 1:00 p.m. Alperovich arrived at court about forty minutes early, accompanied by the custody that the magistrate imposed on him a week before (–at the request of the complaint and the prosecution– due to the risk of flight), and for his four children. The family and the police surrounded him as a “scrum” to cross the wall of reporters and cameramen who were waiting for him and enter the building. He did not make any statements.
A similar scene occurred when he entered the room, with the black coat over one arm, wearing a blue suit and matching tie, a white shirt, and between the fingers of his left hand the little medal with which he was seen in each hearing in which participated in person. He was accompanied by his defender Augusto Garrido, who replaced Mariano Cúneo Libarona, when he was appointed to the presidential Cabinet.
Judge Padilla informed him that he had the right to say his last words before hearing the verdict, but the former president refused. Then, the magistrate announced an intermission until 8 p.m. Once again, Alperovich had to avoid the swarm of journalists, crowded in the small room. And he again left without making a statement.
The niece filed the complaint in November 2019 both in the Tucumán courts and in the Specialized Fiscal Unit for Violence against Women (UFEM) in Buenos Aires: some events – she listed – had occurred in the Puerto Madero department owned by Alperovich, others in the house he used for his political meetings in Tucumán, in a mansion on the outskirts of the provincial capital and even inside the car where they traveled. At the time of the complaint she was 29 years old. She and she, in parallel, spread a letter where she said that the events had occurred “from December 2017 to May 2019.”
There he went so far as to describe Alperovich as “a monster.” “I didn’t want him to kiss me. He did the same. I didn’t want him to touch me. He did the same. I didn’t want him to penetrate me. He did the same. She immobilized and paralyzed, looking at the rooms, waiting for everything to end, for time to pass. He would leave there and be at my house, there would be more people around, and dissimulation and work were going to take him away from me,” she pointed out.
The young woman was his secretary and managed his agenda, at first for proselytizing activities (at that time Alperovich was a senator) and later within the framework of the electoral campaign for the governorship, in which he ended up losing resoundingly to Juan Manzur. The elections were in June 2019 and Alperovich came fourth.
Half a year after his complaint, he once again issued a public letter, where he lamented the delays in the investigation and the obstacles he encountered in advancing the case: “I don’t need anyone to tell me that José Alperovich committed acts of abuse against me.” physical, sexual and psychological integrity for it to be true, I know it is true, I lived it, it happened to me. I chose to take my case to court, despite how difficult it is to file a complaint, because of my need to put things in their place and say them to free myself from their burden,” wrote F. Four and a half years after file the complaint, Judge Ramos Padilla believed him.
