Attack and rape of a young trans man: "We're going to make you a man"

A 24-year-old transgender man reported being attacked, robbed, and raped in San Miguel de Tucumán. The police refused to take his rape report.

May 3, 2019

By Gabriela Cruz, from San Miguel de Tucumán

NEWS UPDATED AT 6 PM

In San Miguel de Tucumán, Lucas Mathias Gargiulo, a 24-year-old trans man, reported yesterday at Avellaneda Hospital that he was attacked, robbed, and raped on May 1st while returning home. The police station refused to take his rape report. This morning, the legal department of Avellaneda Hospital filed a report for the crime of sexual abuse with the Specialized Prosecutor's Office for Crimes Against Sexual Integrity, headed by María del Carmen Reuter, as confirmed to Presentes by the Prosecutor's Office.

Lucas—who works at the Ayelén LGBT Library, named in memory of Ayelén Gómez, a young trans woman murdered in August 2017—went out on Tuesday, April 30, to celebrate getting a job. “It’s a reason to celebrate, especially for us, because it’s very difficult to find work as a trans person,” Lolo Franco, Lucas’s friend, a member of the Trans Employment Quota Front, and a representative of the Ayelén LGBT Library, told Presentes. After leaving the bar where he had met up with friends to celebrate and have fun, Lucas decided to stay at a friend’s apartment and return home in the morning, when it was “safer.”

At 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, May 1st, he got out of a taxi on Belgrano Avenue in the city of Tucumán because the driver didn't dare walk the three blocks to his house. "It's a very unsafe area," Lucas recounts the taxi driver telling him. After walking one block, he was intercepted by two men on a motorcycle who robbed and brutally assaulted him. "While they were hitting me, they said, 'Faggot, we're going to make you a man.' And when they pulled down my pants and saw I didn't have a penis, they seemed to get even angrier," he explains in a video he posted on his Facebook account. At the police station, they refused to take his report about the rape he suffered. They only recorded the robbery and the beating.

Published by Lucas Mathias Gargiulo on Wednesday, May 1, 2019

“They made me walk from the police station to Police Headquarters. I went alone. I went to the station, which is four blocks away, and then I had to go back to the place where this happened,” Lucas posted on the social network where his friends and fellow activists learned what had happened. He also said that there were five police officers on the corner where he was attacked. But none of them heard the screams or did anything.

Lucas Mathias Gargiulo is a trans man who works actively at the Ayelén Library. His friend and fellow activist, Lolo Franco, accompanied him to the hospital for consultations and necessary tests. “Thanks to Dr. Fabiana Reina, we were able to get him all the preventative care and tests done. It also appears he suffered internal injuries,” Lolo told Presentes. Only after the medical staff intervened was it possible to file a report of the sexual abuse the young trans man suffered. This was confirmed to Presentes by sources at the health center.

“Lucas told us what had happened to him and that he was very scared, so considering that it is an episode of acute sexual abuse, we acted according to the protocol that establishes medical assistance, psychological assistance, infectious disease assistance and legal assistance,” Fabiana Reina, a professional specializing in obstetrics and gynecology, gynecological endocrinology and pediatric and adolescent gynecology, told Presentes.

Lucas is a patient of Dr. Reina in the gynecology department of Avellaneda Hospital, where he regularly receives hormone therapy. After the incident on May 1st, Lucas went to the doctor's office, and after explaining what had happened, he received the appropriate care. "Since his condition did not require hospitalization, he is being treated on an outpatient basis and is receiving infectious disease care, psychiatric and psychological support, and laboratory tests, which he completed today," the doctor stated.

In a brief interview with Presentes, Lucas Gargiulo expressed his gratitude for the support he has received. Furthermore, through his activism at the Ayelén Library and his commitment to the fight for LGBT rights, he encourages everyone to participate in the march taking place on Monday, as he believes it is a way to say "enough" to hate crimes and attacks.

“The police didn’t believe me”

“When I told them I had been raped, that they had shoved a stick inside me, they didn’t record anything because they didn’t believe me. I thought, I’m a trans guy, I’m a dude, I’m not showing my chest, I’m not showing my ass. It’s what everyone else says: ‘he asked for it because he was showing off.’ I was just being myself, walking home like any other day,” Lucas says in the public complaint he made on social media.

“Society must respect dissident identities.”

Fabiana Reina was appointed in 2017 as the lead specialist physician for the sexual health program operating within the gynecology department of Avellaneda Hospital. “At that time, I had 8 patients; today, 285 patients have gone through the program. Many of them are receiving hormone therapy and also medical care because there are many patients who only come to the department to have other conditions monitored or to continue receiving clinical treatment,” explains the healthcare professional.

“There’s a huge problem because coming to terms with gender identity is generally not easy, since there’s often a family environment that doesn’t understand, doesn’t support, or even leads to expulsion from the home,” Reina maintains, emphasizing the importance of family members listening to children and adolescents regarding their gender identities. Or these are realities that are hidden until they explode or overflow in some other way. “If there’s no support at home, they arrive at the clinic with their adolescence already behind them, relying on other friends instead of what would be ideal: the support of a family from the beginning, that is, before puberty.”

It is in this sense that Dr. Reina insists that “society must respect dissident identities and learn that diverse identities appear in childhood.” She adds: “These manifestations in childhood can be the first signs of transgender people, and failing to address or listen to them at that time can cause significant trauma.”

They are calling for a march on Monday

On Monday, May 6th, a march will be held demanding justice for Lucas, but also calling for the provincial government to take more fundamental measures to address the problems faced by the LGBT community in general and the trans community in particular. “We are going to demand that police officers be trained so that no trans woman or man has to go through this vulnerability of having to explain, having to try to be believed, and making them understand. There shouldn't be any need to explain anything. The police have to do their job and take our reports without us having to explain anything,” says activist Lolo Franco. “We are not on the political agenda; our community is invisible and forgotten.” The march was organized collectively and announced in a statement that places the violence Lucas suffered within a broader context.

“Any one of us is at risk in Tucumán. If our comrade Lucas Gargiulo, simply for being a trans man, is brutally attacked in broad daylight on a street in San Miguel de Tucumán, with five police officers standing by and doing nothing, the entire LGBT+ community in the province is unprotected,” the statement reads. It also recalls that the provincial legislature voted by majority not to consider the proposed job quota for trans people, “because they believe that gender identity is merely a personal matter for which the State is not responsible. The bill is languishing in some drawer of the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the wealthiest legislature in the country.” The statement denounces the State’s indifference to demands for the protection of human rights, as well as the lack of political will to ensure that Comprehensive Sexuality Education is effectively taught as mandated by law.

For the time being, Lucas Gargiulo is accompanied by his aunt and LGBT activists from the province. Today he will continue with the necessary medical examinations and will continue receiving legal advice regarding the steps to take to seek justice.

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