Anger and indignation in Chile after a rapist’s prison sentence was overturned

It is a court decision that has sparked the anger and indignation of Chilean feminists. On December 28, 2022, justice was announced the annulment of the 20-year prison sentence of Martin Pradenas for multiple rapes and sexual assaults involving five victims, aged 13 to 21 at the time of the incident. The Supreme Court, the country’s highest judicial body, upheld the annulment action and pointed out “ a lack of impartiality on the part of one of the judges”. One of them, Leonel Torres, commented on the case on his Youtube channel during the ongoing trial, defining the defendant as a rapist.

A new process must therefore be carried out. Until then, Martin Pradenas will remain in custody.

The suicide of Antonia Barra

The case begins in 2019, through the story of one of Martin Pradenas’ victims. On 18 September a young woman of 21, Antonia Barra, spends a few days in the city of Pucón with her friend Consuelo. She meets Martin Pradenas, then 28, at a party. Cameras close to the club showed that he harassed her for a long time before being able to leave the club with her, visibly intoxicated. The footage has since been made public by Chilean media. The next day, she Antonia Barra sent a message to Consuelo, stating that she was raped by Martin Pradenas.

Only a month later the young woman, confronted with her ex-boyfriend, was forced to talk about the rape she suffered. Instead of supporting her, she not only insulted her girlfriend, but also recorded their phone conversation of her without her knowledge, and passed it on to other people, including Martin Pradenas, who would later threaten Antonia Barra . A few days later, the young woman committed suicide.

Justicia para Antonia: a mobilization to obtain justice

It was thanks to Antonia Barra’s family that the case was publicized in the following months. After learning of her ex-boyfriend’s recording in which she tells of being raped by Martin Pradenas, Alejandro Barra, her father, summoned the press to make public the reasons for her daughter’s suicide and to ask for justice . “Today I think of how many girls are like my daughter, who out of shame of being unmasked, of being targeted, do not report”he said in 2020. “A girl should be applauded for daring to report a criminal! This is what I want […] I tell the girls: if something like this happens to you, say so. Don’t think that you will be targeted, that they will come out on the networks, because all this can be fixed. Everything but death. »

Antonia Barra’s story is symptomatic of the stigma that weighs on victims of sexual violence, even from those close to her.

In July 2020, Martin Pradenas was first placed under house arrest pending trial, then was finally placed in pre-trial detention at the Llancahue Penitentiary Center in Valdivia. In February 2021, the investigators obtained additional time to continue the investigation. The discovery of a computer containing several thousand pornographic photos that Martin Pradenas had deleted really turned the tables. Martin Pradenas’ mother also confessed to having destroyed her son’s old phone to make the incriminating messages disappear.

Under the pseudonym “Andrea”, Martin Pradenas had also managed to join a Whatsapp group that brought together people who supported Antonia Barra’s family and took action to seek justice. This allowed him to know the progress of the case.

Another event made Antonia Barra’s story even more emblematic of the injustices and prejudices suffered by victims of sexual violence. A month after the young woman’s suicide, the Las Tesis collective made itself known with the performance A violator in your path (“A rapist is coming”) earlier in front of a police station in Valparaiso. A song that has become known around the world as a symbol of feminist struggles.

An incomprehensible decision for the victims and their families

On August 6, 2022, the court of Temuco delivered its verdict and sentenced Martin Pradenas to 20 years in prison for multiple rapes and sexual assaults. The prosecution had asked for 41 years in prison.

More than two years later, the annulment of this conviction is welcomed a lot of anger and misunderstandings. Demonstrations were held in front of the Supreme Court the day after the verdict. Member of the national leadership of the Red Chilena contra la Violencia Hacia las Mujeres, Lorena Astudillo denounces a decision that does not call into question the evidence brought by the prosecution, but will still force the victims and their families to relive a new trial:

“We understand that the Supreme Court must check and guarantee the impartiality of the judges, but it must also guarantee justice. »

For Alejandro Barra, the drastic decision handed down by the Supreme Court is proof that he cares more about what a judge can say than about the fate of the victims: “forget all the imbalance that the law produces in the victims, in the witnesses”.

Photo copyright : Red Chilena Against Violence Hacia Las Mujeres (Twitter)