Argentina: A Qom woman is imprisoned for defending herself against her abuser
She was attacked on several occasions, she defended herself and when she went to report her attacker she ended up arrested.
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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina. Eliana Encina, 23, has two young children and spent Christmas in jail. She is accused of attempted murder for shooting the men she accuses of beating her nearly to death and sexually assaulting her.
“They were attacking me, I did it to defend myself. I’m still in jail, they’re free, and no one takes my complaints or listens to me,” Eliana told Presentes from her cell at the police station in Pampa del Indio , the town in the northern province of Chaco where the events took place. “My ordeal is a clear example of how the justice system condemns women and lets abusers go free.”
On September 1st, she was ordered to pretrial detention. Now, the public defender's office has requested house arrest for her because her children are minors, among other reasons. This woman of Qom origin faces legal proceedings without having had access to the case file, without legal assistance, and without the possibility of being a plaintiff.
Meanwhile, the Chaco Human Rights and Gender Secretariat requested that the prosecutor in the case expedite the legal proceedings, grant house arrest, and provide medical attention to the detainee. It noted that the accused has not been asked whether she belongs to an Indigenous community.
In fact, Eliana is part of the Qom community. “The demand for Eliana Lencina’s release must be urgent and taken up by all social and women’s organizations. Above all, so that she doesn’t spend the entire court recess in jail,” the Women Workers’ Assembly stated, while sharing her testimony on social media.
Eliana's Story
Eliana Encina was born in Pampa del Indio. Her family consists of her mother, sisters, and her children, an 8-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl. She was in secondary school when she began her conflict with her former partner, Cristina Soto, over a comment about alleged mistreatment of her children, two girls and a boy.
“One day I arrived at her house and they were inside a cistern, the water was up to their bellies. I took them out and she went crazy, she told me that she was their mother and that she was punishing them like that. That was in 2017 and that's what started it all,” Encina explained to this agency.
The escalation of violence that followed that exchange of words led her to drop out of school. One afternoon in April of this year, Eliana was enjoying some leisure time by a stream when she was viciously attacked by Soto, her daughters, her husband, and a cousin, in an incident captured on video and broadcast by Crónica TV.
“They almost killed me. They took off my clothes, groped me, cut me with a knife, and cut my hair. There was no penetration, but the man touched all my private parts with his hands and feet. I filed reports with medical documentation for my broken ribs, bites on my back, and a broken nose, but no one did anything.” The woman breaks down in tears. She adds that she fell into a depression and attempted suicide twice.
Emigrating to avoid being attacked
She went to Rosario for a while, but had to return to her village because they couldn't afford the rent. She resumed her studies, but the threats continued. “ They would wait for me on a street corner near the school. The man told me he was going to rape me, kill me, and dump me in the woods. They also threatened to kill my children ,” she says. She decided to stay locked up in her mother's house, but one day her 15-year-old sister came back crying: they had threatened to do the same thing to her as they had to Eliana. “I couldn't go to work, or take my children to school, I couldn't do anything. It was a total nightmare,” she says.
On August 13, her family went to a horse-breaking event. At 7 p.m., her sister asked her to pick up her children. Eliana went, and there she was attacked once again. Santos Soraire broke part of her face and chased her. “I took out the gun I had, which I had gotten to protect myself, and fired into the air to make him stop following me, but since he didn't stop, I shot him and wounded him in the stomach. There were witnesses, but they don't want to take the ones who would testify in my favor,” she says.
Encina went to the police station to report what had happened; she was badly beaten. But instead of taking her statement, they arrested her. “No one contacts me, they don’t tell me anything, my reports never even reached the prosecutor’s office,” she complains. The family made an effort to raise the money that lawyer Feldman required; they paid him, but the lawyer withdrew from the case.
Without advocates for victims
In case file 495/2021-5 entitled Soto Cristina and Soraire Santos s/injuries in assault and simple sexual abuse , Eliana Encina has no legal representation, and that case is about to go to oral and public trial without the accused knowing that situation.
“Even while I’m in jail, I continue to receive threats against me and my family, that they’re going to kill me when I get out. I’ve been in jail for five months for defending myself,” she says. The Qom woman explains that it all started when she exposed Soto’s mistreatment of her children. “There are neighbors who witnessed her putting them in a chair and hitting them, that’s why the children aren’t with her anymore. At a hearing about that, she threatened the officials with death; I don’t know what world we live in anymore. On top of that, she brags about it on social media. She also posted that they’re not going to release me because they’re telling her everything,” she recounted. Meanwhile, she adds that “Santos Soraire has an arrest warrant for cattle rustling, but he’s walking around like nothing’s wrong.”
A context of violence
Public defender Ramón Salinas explained to Presentes that the Resistencia Court of Appeals (the capital city of Chaco province) must now rule on the request for house arrest, after which the case would have the necessary evidence to proceed to trial for attempted homicide. The prosecution, led by Guillermo Codutti, refuses to grant her this benefit, considering her "dangerous" and accusing her of threatening the other family. The question then becomes whether Eliana will spend the entire court recess in a cell that doesn't even have a bathroom.
For this reason, Amira Nahir Barod, coordinator of Strategic Litigation at the Secretariat of Human Rights and Gender, intervened and asked Prosecutor Codutti to grant house arrest because “there is clear evidence of the vulnerable situation the defendant has experienced, who prima facie is unaware of the status of the proceedings in which she is the victim” and because “the police station is not equipped to provide a cell with a bathroom and patio for women, as verified by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture of the province of Chaco.” In her request, she also mentioned the existence of minor children, the defendant's children.
According to Barod, it is "a situation of community violence by three people that has escalated to the point of violating life, health and sexual integrity," therefore, he defined the situation as "a context of reciprocal violence that kept increasing."
The official told this agency that “it is an option to be a plaintiff in the cases that a complaint is filed, she did not request to be a plaintiff, it was explained to her mother Mónica Encina and to the comrades of the Polo Obrero that they can approach the correctional court of San Martín, if they do not give them information we can intervene.”
Poor and Qom
Eliana never had the opportunity to decide on the matter because she lacks legal counsel. “There’s always the possibility that she could file an official complaint through a public defender, and we hope that the law creating the victim advocates positions last year will soon be regulated because, sadly, this happens a lot throughout the province. One solution would be the implementation of the Victims’ Law,” she explained.
Barod revealed that the system shows her with several prior offenses, which is why she is being denied house arrest. Her request to prosecutor Codutti went unanswered. “It was very difficult even to get a hearing; there is a lot of prejudice against our work. Regardless of what the accused may have done, her case cannot be addressed without a gender perspective,” she stated.
“The suffering of Eliana and her family is not arbitrary. Situations of sexual abuse and the protection of rapists by the justice system are not new in the province, especially for poor young women and those from indigenous families. The justice system has released Santos Soraire and Cristina Soto,” stated the Plenary of Women Workers, a group affiliated with the Workers' Party.
From her cell, Eliana recounted her story in two videos:
The second part of the story can be heard at this link .
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