Justice prosecuted the former governor of Tucumán and former national senator José Jorge Alperovich in the case in which he is being investigated for nine acts of sexual abuse against a niece, According to sources from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, THE NATION. Six of those abuses were, according to the ruling, with carnal access.
Judge Osvaldo Rappawho signed the processing, maintained the “paroleAlperovich’s. The magistrate had ten days to resolve the situation of the former senator, who declared last April 20 before the Criminal and Correctional Court 35 and that he rejected the facts imputed to him.
In a 419-page resolution, Rappa ordered the prosecution of the former provincial president – who was governor for 12 years – for simple sexual abuse on three occasions (two of them, attempted) and aggravated sexual abuse on sixindicated judicial sources. The magistrate mentioned in his ruling the “outrageous sexual submission” that Alperovich violated his niece and highlighted the absolute asymmetry that existed between them. The resolution makes a detailed reconstruction of the facts under investigation and that is why, in order to preserve the victim, the ruling is kept in reserve, they informed THE NATION judicial sources.
If Rappa’s decision remains firm, the former governor will have to face an oral trial for these facts. For now, the judge ordered an embargo on the assets of Alperovich de 2.5 million pesos.
The prosecutors Santiago Vismara, of the Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office 10 of the City, and Mariela Labozzetta, of the Fiscal Unit Specialized in Violence against Women, were the ones who promoted the investigation, which originally had a parallel file in Tucumán, where the complainant had also made a presentation. Finally, everything was unified in the city of Buenos Aires.
Alperovich was questioned and testified for an hour and a half via Zoom. In that hearing he defended himself against the accusations and later used his Twitter account to say that he “proved” that the complaint against him “was fake” and aimed “exclude him from the political scene”.
However, that idea of “conspiracy” against him that the former Peronist legislator raised during the presentation, in which he did not answer questions, did not convince the judge, who now issued his prosecution in this file, which began in 2019, with the complaint of his niece who was also his assistant.
In his ruling, the judge considered as evidence, in addition to the victim’s testimony, the opinion of a Supreme Court expert who presented a detailed analysis of the signs of abuse and post-traumatic stress that he reported having detected. Also, the statements of a gynecologist, who saw the victim after one of the events and verified physical injuries, and of psychologists who treated the young woman. In addition, chats sent by Alperovich to his niece and testimonies of people who worked for him and who declared how he treated women were taken into account (this last test was in context, sources in the case reported).
During the course of the case, the dispute over jurisdiction even reached the Supreme Court, since both the Justice of the City and that of Tucumán intended to keep the file because the crimes under investigation occurred both in Madero Port as in the province that Alperovich governed.
Finally, the highest court echoed the arguments of the interim attorney, Eduardo Casal, and defined that the case of sexual abuse should be investigated in the Buenos Aires Justice, a setback for the politician, who hoped that it would be processed in the Judicial Power of his province.
When the complaint became public, Alperovich was a national senator for the Front for Victory (FPV) and had a mandate until December of last year. But due to the content of the file, the then legislator decided to take leave and lowered his public profile. in 2019 tried to return to the governorship, but was defeated at the polls. He was fourth.
In 2020, when I had 29 yearsthe ex-governor’s niece wrote a letter in which she said that Alperovich He violated her “sexually, physically and psychologically” from December 2017 to May 2019. “For a year and a half I suffered violations of my physical and sexual integrity. The enslavement was devastating. So much that I couldn’t even put it into words. He oscillated freely and comfortably in the three scenarios before which I positioned myself: family, work and home. horror of intimacy that he forced me to live with him, ”said the woman.
“I do not write to convince anyone of anything. I am here against the oppression of silence and because of the need to recover my life, of healing by calling things as they are, without softening or dyeing them, putting the monster name and surname. When you don’t name it, it doesn’t exist”, He assured in that letter, where he revealed about his uncle: “I didn’t want him to kiss me. She did the same. I didn’t want him to touch me. She did the same. I didn’t want him to penetrate me. She did the same. Immobilized and paralyzed, looking at the rooms, waiting for everything to end, for time to run.