By Stanley Luna , from El Salvador

Valentina and her partner were arrested by two police officers in February of this year. The officers tortured them for hours, but Valentina is accused of injuring an officer in self-defense, and the Attorney General's Office is pursuing a trial against her for assault and resisting arrest.

Valentina and Fernanda were returning from dinner and stopped to talk two blocks from their neighborhood, in the western department of Santa Ana, 68 kilometers west of San Salvador. It was the night of February 8, 2020.

Valentina told Presentes that that night they raised their voices slightly, and three men in charge of security in the neighborhood where they live approached them and told them to calm down. Then they proceeded to harass them with uncomfortable questions.

At 10:30 p.m., 15 minutes after being with the security guards, police officers German Ernesto Ruíz Olano and Cruz Alberto Castro Sánchez arrived in a police pickup truck, according to the prosecutor's complaint.  

Valentina recalls that the two police officers got out of the patrol car angrily and began insulting them. Fernanda tried to explain that they were on their way home, that they were simply talking, and that they couldn't be arrested without cause, since they knew their rights.

These words were enough for Ruiz Olano to throw her to the ground, face down, and handcuff her. His partner, Castro Sánchez, handcuffed Valentina with her arms behind her back.

“I tried to defend myself and her as best I could. They had her on the ground. The other man, who is now accusing me of assault, was kicking her,” Valentina says.

The police officers put them in the bed of the pickup truck and Ruiz Olano kicked both of them in the face with his boots, while the other police officer drove for 30 minutes until they reached a police station.

At the police station, the officers who arrested them threw them onto a gravel floor, tied them to their cells, and forced them to kneel. They sprayed them with dirty, cold water from a sink, continued beating them, and took photographs of them.

Locked up and incommunicado

Both of them had their shoes stolen. In addition, Valentina had her cell phone stolen and Fernanda had $22 stolen. Then they were locked in a cell where they lived with nine other gang members.

The gang members provided them with food because, from their capture until the day of their initial hearing, they had no contact with their families. For the first few days, they also lacked legal representation, which violates the principle of presumption of innocence.

Valentina recalls that after the torture, their faces were unrecognizable. Before dawn, they were transferred to another police station where they awaited their hearing for resisting arrest. But Officer Ruiz Olano also filed charges against Valentina for assault.

The women arrived barefoot at the March 11 hearing, their bodies bearing the marks and injuries from the beating. Both were released, and of everything stolen from them, they were only able to recover part of the $22.

Fernanda was acquitted, but Valentina remains free on bail pending trial for resisting arrest and assault. The police officer offered her $100 in exchange for dropping the case, but she refused. The judge then imposed conditions on her to be followed until the trial concludes. 

Valentina is 30 and Fernanda is 26. They had never before experienced a lesbophobic attack like the one that night. Out of fear, they prefer not to reveal their identities.

A complaint that did not go anywhere

Angélica María Rivas is Valentina and Fernanda's lawyer. She belongs to the Feminist Collective, a women's organization in El Salvador.

In an interview with Presentes, he said that the defense presumes that it was one of the three security guards who approached the couple who called the police to capture the victims.

 “Both defended themselves, but since Fernanda was the first one thrown onto the bed (of the car), the other woman had a little more time to defend herself. But clearly this cannot be called injuries, because a woman with her physical build is not going to hit a police officer trained with weapons,” he points out.

Rivas accompanied Valentina and Fernanda to file a complaint against the police officers at the Attorney General's Office (FGR) in March, for the crimes of assault, torture, arbitrary acts, and unlawful detention by a public official. The victims had already filed a complaint, days after the incident, at the Specialized Court for Women in Santa Ana.

Eight months after the complaint was filed, the lawyer says the agents have still not been charged in court, but the Attorney General's Office has one year to file charges.

A hearing against Valentina

The preliminary hearing for Valentina, who is accused of assault and resisting arrest, is scheduled for December 4th. This hearing has been postponed three times. The last postponement was at the end of October, when Rivas asked the judge for time to reach an agreement that would not favor the police officer but would also not leave the couple's torture unpunished.

The Attorney General's Office, through its communications unit, indicated that Valentina and Fernanda will withdraw their complaint against the police officers, and then Valentina will reach an agreement with Ruiz Olano in court.

This information is dismissed by Rivas, who clarifies that, given Ruiz Olano's reluctance to have his police record tarnished, they have discussed the possibility of him withdrawing the complaint against Valentina and the couple withdrawing their complaint against the police officers for Valentina's mental health. However, this is not yet an agreement.

Presentes tried to find out if the National Civil Police (PNC) has opened an internal investigation against the agents, but there was no response from the head of the institution's communications unit.

This is not the first time the National Civil Police (PNC) has been involved in attacks against the LGBTI population. Last July, three police officers received 20-year sentences for the murder of Camila Díaz , a trans woman who had tried to flee the violence she suffered in El Salvador, but was returned to the country and murdered months later.

The crime was not classified as a hate crime, but the defendants' modus operandi was similar to that of police officers Ruiz Olano and Castro Sanchez, as the convicted men illegally detained Diaz and beat her, from the moment of her capture until they left her lying on a lonely street outside San Salvador.

El Salvador still lacks a criminal policy and a protocol for investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Last November, following the murders of four transgender women, the United Nations demanded that authorities prosecute and punish those responsible.