The walls of the Canadá Children’s Headquarters F changed color. Now they are black. The graffiti that are repeated on the walls of the institution with phrases such as “Hogar Violator”, “Pedophiles”, “Freddy Abuser” overlap the colors of joy with which animations and cartoons that represent the innocence of those who lived in that place had been drawn.
But in the home of the ICBF the walls are not only scratched. Forced doors, garbage cans on the floor destroyed and broken glass describe how the lives of the parents of the seven children to whom medical tests were They already confirmed that their children were sexually abused by whom, it was supposed to protect them.
The institution, located in the Villa Javier neighborhood, in the town of San Cristóbal, ceased to be a space for the care of minors and became a crime scene in which, allegedly, the ‘teacher’ Freddy abused at least 12 children. For others, more analytical of the atrocity that occurred there, the kindergarten is now the living test of a care system that has stopped working many years ago and where the desire to fill spaces eliminates safety and hiring filters.
Behind anger, screams and frustration of parents, who are now also victims of a sexual abuser, there are only feelings of guilt for not having heard in time, or at least that was described by Katherine, the mother of one of the girls of the school.
In the head of this woman she only repeats again and again why she did not listen to her little girl when she warned her that she did not want to go to the garden; When, almost praying, I told her that she did not want to attend that place and when her eyes, as she describes it, told her about the girl’s terror to know that she would meet her abuser again.
“One feels guilty, because many times one of a mother does not listen to his children, and more children under 3 years. Inside me, I say: Why didn’t I hear? (…) She hung on my neck and told me that I didn’t want to go”He said.
However, the story in each home was different. On Monday, April 28, it was perhaps the worst day for Margie Espinel, the first to realize that something was not well with her 3 -year -old daughter. That night, the girl told her that her professor gave her kisses in her mouth and pointed to her with her fingers and the innocence of her age what they did. He also showed him that his victimizer touched his body and that his intimate parts touched his tongue.
But in this case it gets more murky. Freddy Castellanos was captured after a mob of parents broke everything in the garden trying to find it. The institution’s coordinators hid among the halls, and a group of police surrounded the facilities to prevent mothers and fathers from taking justice on their own.
According to the prosecutor of the case before the guarantee control judge, the man abused the children within the bathrooms of the school, took advantage of His role as a teacher to touch them in their intimate parts and would have created a kind of “game” to tangle the minors and achieve their mission.
One of the testimonies presented ensures that man would have asked his victims to bed on the floor to play and, putting elements “like a kind of stones or buttons” on the children’s body, took the opportunity to touch them. The narrative is no less than repudiable.
As if the situation was no longer painful enough, not only for children and fathers, but for a whole society that constantly fails the little ones, one of the victims mothers ensures that, within the abused minors, two were infected with HIV.
Although there is no official declaration of the Prosecutor’s Office or the Institute of Legal Medicine that corroborates this version, the parents of the school do ratify it. On this, Astrid Cáceres, director of the family Welfare Institute, says that there are still no medical studies that confirm it or elements that certify that the alleged abuse of these children is a carrier of the disease.
An abuser without past
Although in this case the law has acted, everything seems to indicate that the trail of that predator Not only was it left in the Canada Children’s Home, and parents fear that there will be more victims in other institutions.
In official documents it was found that Freddy Arley Castellanos was coordinator of two other children’s homes of the ICBF, one in Bosa and the other in Chapinero, and that, in addition, he was a dance teacher in 2014, for seven months, in the renowned country gym Los Alpes.
According to the statements that are being reviewed in the internal audit made by the ICBF, Castellanos would have been taken to the Canada Garden by the institution’s coordinator. In fact, the parents say that it was that same woman who presented him as a “complete” man and “of all his trust.” This coordinator is indicated by the parents of “not making their face” and having “covered” the alleged abuser.
Councilor Juan Baena revealed that the company Parque El Canada, the same that operated the garden where the events occurred, is responsible for the administration of nine other children’s homes in Bogotá and has millionaire contracts with the ICBF since 2012. Moreover, according to the Secop II Public Public Procurement platform, the last agreement signed between the company and the institution was in February of this year, when the administration of three children’s gardens in Bosa was given.
About Castellanos there is no greater reference of his background or the behaviors of the past. The house where he was captured was not his “place of habitual residence”, there is no record of his family and in his social networks there was no trace of publications since 2014, when he posted an image of a group of children, apparently, in the middle of an artistic presentation, accompanied by a message from a family father who said: “Excellent all the dances, teacher”. To which he replied: “Thank you very much, mom, everything is due to the good work of my children. They are a love”.
The case of Castellanos and the 12 children of the Canadá Children’s Home shudders Bogotá. Although the alleged person is already in jail, the truth is that the investigation has many black areas and there are several questions: did the coordinators of these vexations know? Were they negligent? Do they ignore parents’ alerts? Are there more victims?
For now, there are no answers. However, there is a clarity: no one, never, will be sure who gives the care of their children. Sexual predators, abusers, abusers or any subject with some mental pathology could be free in the street sneaking into any space to sniff their victims.
