A Cuban mother reported that her 15-year-old daughter was raped by the vice-principal of her school, the Panchito Gómez Toro Polytechnic School in Holguín, and the aggressor is currently out on bail with no trial date set.
The incident occurred on December 7 and to date the girl has had to appear before instructors and prosecutors 4 times to remember what happened that day. That man spent only a month in provisional prison and is currently free on the streets because his lawyer released him with a bail of 15 thousand pesos, explained his mother, identified on Facebook as Evis Tamayo.
My family is not sleeping because this man is on the streets with no trial date, even though six months have passed since the incident.
The girl is a minor with a mental disability. Although her chronological age is 15 years, she has been diagnosed with a mental age of 10 years.
The events date back to December 7 when the man, using his authority, took the teenager, at 7:00 am, to a classroom located on the fourth floor of the school, closed the door with a padlock and had sexual relations with her. not consented since the girl wanted to leave there and he did not allow her.
However, Cuban justice understands that if the minor did not scream, it is not rape but a lesser crime.
“Today I feel helpless, disappointed, frustrated, but not defeated,” the girl’s mother said in a post on Facebook.
Tamayo questions that if her daughter has been treated by psychologists since she was 5 years old due to different disorders, diagnosed with a mental age of 10 years, she is harassed by the deputy director of the school where he studies, and under unfounded pretexts he locks her in a classroom on the fourth floor at 7 in the morning, locks the classroom, does not agree to the teenager’s request that she wants to go out, tells her to lower her skirt and penetrates… is this act considered sexual assault? Or does it depend on CONSENT,” the woman asks.
The mother says that after the rape, the girl changed overnight. Tamayo began to notice that her daughter was sleeping poorly and talking in her sleep. She finally found out about the incident because the girl told a friend at the Polytechnic, who told her mother, who in turn told the school’s guide. This teacher was the one who called her and informed her of what had happened.
Once the center became aware, it took immediate action with the deputy director. “Education acted quickly and well and has a very good and complete file. Those who are sleeping and corrupting the case are in the Police. Education investigated well and immediately decided to remove it from the system. On the administrative side I have no complaints,” said Tamayo. in conversation with CyberCuba.
She questions whether her daughter, with a mental age of 10, can exonerate the school’s vice principal from responsibility, just because the law understands that in the absence of violence, force or intimidation it is not rape, but a minor crime punishable by between 1 and 3 years in prison.
The mother also questions that, taking into account her daughter’s disability, it is understood that there could have been consent, taking into account that the deputy director is three times her age and maturity.
This is not the first case of a Cuban mother who denounces the laxity of the Cuban justice system when it comes to prosecuting rapists. In June 2021, CiberCuba published the case of a 13-year-old girl who suffered a gang rape and, far from imprisoning the rapists, they were released and they began a campaign to discredit the girl. Under media pressure, the process was accelerated and the six rapists were sentenced to 21 years in prison.
