The Chilean table tennis player who was fugitive from Argentine justice and he was extradited from his country at the end of last December, he was prosecuted with preventive detention as accused of having sexually abused a 14-year-old teenager, who in 2017 practiced the same sport in the National Center for High Performance Sports (Cenard).
It’s about the Chilean Juan Pablo Lamadrid Barraza (25)whom the national Criminal and Correctional Judge 40, Paula Verónica González, ordered the prosecution as “perpetrator” of the crime of “sexual abuse with carnal access” and also placed an embargo of 7 million pesos on his assets.
The act investigated was committed on December 14, 2017 and was subsequently denounced by the victim herself, who was 14 years old at the time.
According to the 15-page ruling of the magistrate to which Télam agreed, at the time of the abuse, a series of national and international table tennis competitions for adults and minors were taking place at the Cenard.
In those circumstances, The teenager was approached by Lamadrid Barraza and, according to the summary, the attacker “held her tight” and “forced her to enter a machine room” where he abused her, after which he left the place.
Last August the victim made the complaint, with the intervention of the Fiscal Unit Specialized in Violence against Women (UFEM) and in accordance with the complaint, represented by the lawyer Gustavo Romano Dufau, the national and international arrest warrant for the suspect was issued.
“It is all a very hard process. Very hard to assimilate what happened. At the time I did not have the tools or the ability to understand what had happened in my own words,” the victim herself recalled in statements to the press days after making the criminal complaint.
The girl said that the following year she had to compete in a South American tournament and that she began to have “panic attacks” and felt “afraid” to see him again, for which time later she decided to stop practicing at Cenard and in the National Team. Argentina, although at that time he did not reveal the reason why he did so.
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Meanwhile, after ordering the capture of the athlete through the Interpol Red Notice, Agents from the Federal Investigation Division of Fugitives and Extraditions of the Argentine Federal Police (PFA) began the investigation and determined that the fugitive could be in Chile.
For this reason, an exchange of information took place with the Santiago Interpol National Central Officewho finally arrested Lamadrid Barraza on September 21.
After the arrest, the administrative and judicial procedures began, through official channels and through diplomatic channels, to advance in the extradition and transfer of the detainee to Argentina, which took place on December 22 with his arrival at Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, from the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
For his part, the defendant said when investigated by the courts that he was a well-known person in the table tennis environment, denied having committed the abuse and assured that he did not know the reason why the complainant accused him of the rape.
Regarding December 14, he pointed out that his team had strict rules to stay in a group, watch their teammates’ games, and that they could not roam the grounds.
However, Judge González valued the evidence incorporated into the investigation, including testimonial statements from other competitors, psychological expertise and records of the Table Tennis Federations of Argentina and Chile that, contrary to what the defendant said, they reported the presence of the aggressor and victim in the Cenard on the day accused of the rape.
The magistrate concluded that the evidence gathered during the investigation “have confirmed the occurrence of the facts investigated.”
“The victim’s testimony – which he reiterated in identical terms before various interlocutors and at different times – constitutes a contribution of immense costly value and especially valuable for the purpose of having the materiality of the described conduct proven,” the judge said in her resolution.
And in that sense he added: “The testimony is complemented in a coherent way with other indications that, valued as a whole, strengthen the credibility of the young woman’s version and prevent it from being distorted by the plea of innocence made by the accused.”
