Shock and outrage
ARGENTINE COURT’s acquittal in sex work kidnapping case ‘a slap in the face’ for justice
BUENOS AIRES — The acquittal of 13 people accused of kidnapping a young mother and forcing her to work for years as a sex slave spread shock and outrage across Argentina on Wednesday, prompting street protests and calls by political leaders to impeach the three judges who delivered the verdict.
Many called the ruling a setback for Argentina’s efforts to combat sex trafficking, which began largely as a result of Susana Trimarco’s one-woman, decade-long quest to find her missing daughter, Maria de los Angeles “Marita” Veron. Her lawyers said she would pursue appeals.
Trimarco’s search exposed an underworld of organized crime figures who operate brothels with protection from authorities across Argentina.
Security Minister Nilda Garre called the verdict “a tremendous slap in the face for the prospect of justice.”
“It’s not only a reversal for this particular case of the kidnapping and disappearance of Marita Veron, that made society feel deeply the drama of this kind of 21stcentury slavery, covered up for decades by the customs of a network of machista culture,” she said.
It also “renders invisible the suffering of the victims of human-trafficking networks and sexual exploitation, who gave such courageous testimony during the trial, and consecrates judicial impunity for these crimes.”
Other officials also rallied around Veron’s mother, denouncing the verdicts and praising government efforts to save women from prostitution.
Trimarco said President Cristina Fernandez personally called her to express her surprise and outrage.
“I don’t have proof, but I don’t have doubts. When there’s money involved, the whole world can blow their trumpets and it won’t bother them a bit,” Fernandez said Wednesday.
She said the verdicts show the need to eliminate judi- cial corruption by reforming how judges are picked and allowed to remain in their jobs.
“The reality is that the police are not investigating Marita’s disappearance. It’s Susana Trimarco who is investigating and it’s been this way from the beginning,” attorney Carlos Garmendia said.
“The Marita case is emblematic. As a result, much was learned about trafficking networks, how they move (people), how they operate,” he said.
“Above all, this ruling is a message that the trafficking business will continue as usual.”
Some of Wednesday’s street protests became violent, with people throwing eggs and trying to vandalize provincial offices in Tu- cuman and Buenos Aires. Trimarco called on her supporters to keep the peace, even as she expressed her anger at a news conference in the provincial capital.
When Veron disappeared a decade ago, sexual exploitation and people trafficking hardly existed on the national government’s agenda.
Prostitution remains legal in Argentina, but managing brothels and trafficking in people have been federal crimes since 2008, under a law Congress passed after lobbying by Trimarco.
Garre credited her ministry’s enforcement of this law with saving 938 people last year from trafficking — 215 people from the sex trade and 723 from other workplace exploitation — and more than 800 so far this year.
Hundreds of women have been saved by a foundation Trimarco created in her daughter’s name in 2008 with seed money from the U.S. State Department’s “Women of Courage” award. The foundation also provides legal help, but that has been less successful.
To date, the foundation has helped 20 former sex-trafficking victims bring cases against their captors, but they have yet to win a single case. Of these, 12 resulted in federal charges, but a handful were bounced back to even more uncertain justice in provincial courts around Argentina.