Sources from the federal prosecutor’s office specialized in the crime of human trafficking, led by prosecutor Alejandra Mangano, summarize what happened to children under six years of age in the last five years. The applied Sofia Alert -which leads to the implementation of urgent measures to search for children- on five occasions between 2019 and 2024. One case was that of Guadalupe Lucero in San Luis, 5 years old. He never showed up. The hypothesis is that someone sexually abused her and killed her. Her body was not found. The other Sofia Alerts issued were for a stolen baby – it was recovered – and two five-year-old girls, abused, but recovered. The fifth case is that of Loan Pena. The review of the five facts outlines an idea of the possible hypotheses in motion, formulated by the prosecution itself and also supported by the well-known professor of criminology. Raul Torre.
The hypothesis of an accident
“Since the accident hypothesis cannot be ruled out -Torre points out-. That is to say, the boy fell into a pond or a well and has not been found. It’s not just that there can be precarious, failed rakes. I was in a lot of similar cases and in fields like those, sometimes you pass within a meter of a bush and don’t see a body. So it is a current hypothesis.”
The prosecution led by Mangano agrees that it is an alternative to which maximum attention must be paid. Nobody forgets the case of the Pomar family, in which they searched for days and the Pomars’ car appeared 10 meters from the road. Those responsible for the raids ended up being prosecuted.
The sexual abuse hypothesis
The second hypothesis is sexual abuse followed by death. This is what would have happened with Guadalupe in San Luis and with the other two girls, for whom the Alert was launched that bears the name of Sofía Herrera, the girl who disappeared in Tierra del Fuego in 2008. “In general, in In those provinces there is a history with crimes against sexual integrity -Torre insists-. And it becomes homicide because the victim, the little one, knows the abuser or has the geographical reference to where he went, which also ends up marking the abuser. In this crime, the boys are usually street children or belong to severely deteriorated families, but it cannot be ruled out that someone saw the opportunity in Loan and violated him.
The trafficking hypothesis
These two hypotheses, that of the accident, together with the failed search, and that of sexual abuse and homicide, would be the main ones. The third – kidnapping to sell or hand him over – cannot be completely ruled out, although both the prosecutor’s office and Torre see fewer possibilities.. What leads so far to this hypothesis is that a dog or more than one marked the Ford K car of Carlos Pérez and María Victoria Caillava as a place where Loan’s smell was found.
In the environment of criminalists they always value the work of dogs, but they also relativize it: “A dog depends on the interpretation of the instructor. And for the instructors, that is his moment of glory. They have a huge desire for prominence. So, what the dog marks has to be very compatible with other evidence,” analyzes an old police investigator. We will then have to see what Pérez and Caillava respond in the investigations, the analysis of their cell phones – both communications and geolocation – and if more solid evidence emerges in all this evidence.
The disappearance of boys and girls and the Sofia Alert
Although a multitude of cases of missing children are mentioned, the reality is that almost all of them are teenagers who run away from home. And in more than 90 percent of cases, those teens reappear. As pointed out by the specialized trafficking prosecutor’s office, the children who truly set off the alerts were only five in the last five years. Each case is a drama, of course, but there are not hundreds or dozens of similar events.
“An important fact -Torre summarizes-. The thing is that there was evidently no preparation for Loan’s disappearance. It was not a planned event. The father and the boy arrived at lunch unexpectedly, there were other boys at that meeting and no one could foresee that they would go out without the father to pick oranges. Even if he had abuse, it was kind of taking advantage of the opportunity.”
Finally, in the situation table, the precarious performance of the local police forces – the search in the marsh, almost in their underwear, without adequate material – and the lack of support from the Ministry of Security. Patricia Bullrichwho spends a lot of time tweeting, appeared for the first time on Sunday: by then, among other things, a team could have been sent to handle the communications investigation and establish connections between all the suspects, as well as the geolocation of the few people who must have passed through that place in the hours in which Loan disappeared.
