A young trans woman was illegally detained in her home and then sexually abused by several police officers, whom she reported. The investigation went to trial without regard for the victim's basic rights. The same court that convicted another young woman, Belén, for a miscarriage, in this case avoided convicting the police for the sexual abuse.   By Gabriela Cruz, from San Miguel de Tucumán Photos: Ignacio López Isasmendi Celeste was detained in the bathroom of her home, where they broke into her house illegally. They took her to a police station where there were no cells for women. Provincial police officers abused her and locked her in the cell with male detainees. She was able to see them collecting money from the inmates who came in to rape her. She doesn't remember exactly how many days she was held; she estimates it was four. At one point, when they took her out to clean, she ran as fast as she could. She arrived at the Zenón Santillán Health Center in San Miguel de Tucumán, the doctors examined her, and she reported what had happened. She was 21 years old, it was November 2013. Three years later, she would receive a sentence, but no justice. It began with a court notification. She couldn't read it, she couldn't read it. Her teachers helped her: she had to testify in the next few days. She didn't know there would be a trial. She didn't know she could file a plaintiff. She didn't know the prosecutor investigating her complaint. And when the day of the oral argument arrived, a new prosecutor took over. Celeste listened, testified, cried, and screamed in helplessness that October 2016, in the courts of the province of Tucumán.

The victim who could not be a complainant

  Between late September and early October of this year, Celeste arrived at the Open Doors Trans Educational Center (Cetrans) to learn to read and write. Like many trans girls, she had dropped out of school; school was too hostile a place. This space felt different from the ones she had encountered throughout her 24 years. “The school is not exclusively trans,” explains Fabián Vera del Barco, the director. “Of the 30 people enrolled, ten are trans women or transvestites. The rest are very young mothers, gay men, and adults who, for various reasons, have been excluded from the educational system and find a welcoming place to finish their studies,” says the philosophy graduate who is the driving force behind the project. Celeste began working with the teacher appointed by the provincial Ministry of Education. She had been attending classes for just a few days when she received the court notification. She was to appear to testify in the trial that had her as a victim. “We knew about the sexual abuse case because it had been reported in the media,” Fabián says, recalling the news that circulated in 2013. “What we didn't know was that it was still in court and that, within 72 hours of receiving that notice that he couldn't read, he had to appear to testify at the trial.”   Fabián is part of the Tucumán Diverso group and campaigned for the Equal Marriage Law and the Gender Identity Law. As a gay man who decided to adopt, he knows how difficult it is to navigate state bureaucracy combined with a lack of gender perspective. “We sought advice, because none of us are lawyers, and we asked fellow activists for help,” Fabián recalls. Thus, a Justice for Celeste support group was set up and some actions were coordinated with organizations. The trial was imminent. Celeste was to testify as a victim in an investigation that had run its course and that she didn't know. The prosecutor, Estella Gifoniello, had barely had a chance to read the 20 volumes of the file on the day of the start of the oral and public hearing. “We were going to a trial where she wasn't a plaintiff, where she didn't have a lawyer representing her. With a prosecutor who didn't know her,” Fabián comments. The judges who made up the tribunal, Dante Ibáñez, Néstor Macoritto, and Fabián Fradejas, were renowned in the province: the same ones who intervened in the case of Belén, the young woman convicted of a miscarriage.  

Seven police officers charged

  On November 27, 2014, as soon as Celeste escaped from the 4th precinct, she reported the incident to the hospital's police station. It later emerged that the complaint had not been reported to the authorities. Celeste said she also tried to report what had happened to the prosecutor's office. There, she testified, the police chiefs forced her to sign a retraction. Her word seemed to have no value, that of a poor trans woman, plagued by exclusion and violence, with a family that couldn't understand or support her self-identified identity. Seven police officers were charged: Rubén Ernesto Aguirre, Walter Francisco Trejo, Miguel Antonio Concha, Ramón Julio César Ledesma, Roberto Antonio Gallardo, and Aldo Omar Quiroga. They were brought to trial for three crimes: depriving Celeste of her liberty (arresting her in her home without a warrant), sexually abusing her, and being necessary participants in the abuse committed by the other detainees. The "police family" was in charge of guarding and organizing the courtroom. The searches, the glances, the gestures underscored the asymmetry of the space and the unequal conditions under which the parties arrived at the trial.

 

The defenders did not respect gender identity

  Throughout the hearings, the defense attorneys addressed Celeste as the masculine, disregarding the Gender Identity Law. They pointed out contradictions with the statement they had made her sign in 2013. “It was embarrassing; she can't read or write. They kept arguing about whether Celeste could recognize the signature, when she can barely sign her own name,” says Fabián. The evidence was a document she didn't read. “We managed to get Celeste to at least not testify in front of her seven abusers,” recalls Fabián Vera del Barco. “We had to ask the prosecutor to please clear the courtroom of the defendants. In fact, the prosecutor said, 'What a shame, because it would have been nice if Celeste herself could point the finger at them.'” The police officers were identified in a lineup.  

"There is no justice because there is no access to rights"

  Soledad Deza, a lawyer with the Women for Women group, in charge of defending Belén's case, accompanied and advised Celeste. Due to procedural timescales, the victim was unable to file a complaint, and Soledad and her team had to accompany her from outside. They explained what was happening: Celeste had been denied real access to justice. "What is the true meaning of the right of access to justice?" Soledad asks, and answers: "We're talking about a woman who belongs to a disadvantaged group. But we're also talking about an illiterate woman, which deepens the inequality she faces before the police, at the time, and before the judiciary. What is the true meaning of access to justice if this young woman hasn't even had the advice that would allow her to file a complaint, a tool for victims to launch an investigation or challenge a conviction, an acquittal, or a sentence like this one?" The response falls with the weight of helplessness and indignation. “There is no justice. And not just because there hasn't been a conviction: there is no justice because there is no access to justice, and there isn't justice because there was previously no access to education and so many other rights,” says Fabián Vera del Barco. He is a university professor with postgraduate studies, “and I don't understand this judicial world very well; I need technical advice,” he reflects. “Celeste didn't have any technical advice.” The demand for Justice for Celeste took to the streets on the day of the first national women's strike. In Tucumán, thousands of women in black protested the femicides and demanded Belén's acquittal. At the doors of the Palace of Justice, they also raised their voices and held signs for Celeste.    

The sentence that did not condemn sexual abuse

  The defendants were unable to explain Celeste's illegal detention inside her home, under a law declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Ultimately, the ruling sentenced two police officers, Aguirre and Trejo, to five years in prison for unlawfully depriving Celeste of her liberty and for falsifying a public instrument. The then-chief of the police station, Quiroga, was acquitted. Four others will remain under investigation, although they had already been sent to trial. However, the indictment for the sexual abuse was declared null and void: they were not convicted. Soledad Deza says that the Court had two options regarding the two sexual abuse charges: acquit or convict. "It doesn't rule on one of the sexual abuse cases, and on the other, they declare the indictment null and void. For me, that ruling is a trap," the lawyer says after reading the grounds released a few days ago. "What this annulment does is open the door for the accused to argue that they are being tried twice for the same crime and go unpunished," maintains the feminist lawyer, who denounces the lack of gender perspective in the judiciary. Soledad says she knows the prosecution had instructions from the Public Prosecutor's Office to appeal the sentence, the only possible course of action to try to overturn it. To date, it is unknown whether or not the appeal was filed. Neither Celeste nor those accompanying her have received any communication or response.  

"We want to tell you how Celeste is doing, not what happened to her."

  "We want to stop counting corpses; we want to start counting lives. We want to tell how Celeste is doing, not what happened to Celeste," says Fabián Vera del Barco. He insists: Celeste is the name that represents hundreds of trans girls who constantly suffer the violation of their rights. She emphasizes that the case in the media brought visibility to one of the hardest hit sectors. That 21-year-old girl who dared to report the police, three years later she decided to return to school. The Open Doors Trans Educational Center became much more than her refuge from an unequal trial. Today, the 24-year-old woman stands up and dares to dream: "If I finish high school, I'm going to study law because they're not going to run over me again.".    ]]>