This is an excerpt from a longer column in the Washington Post
But in Veracruz, Mexico, you don't rely on the police to punish the guilty and protect the innocent. “The last thing the system of justice provides is justice. I just didn’t trust the authorities,” Fernández said. He worried that the police would humiliate his daughter and then delay her case endlessly. “I knew they would fail us,” he said in an interview.
Instead, Fernández decided to meet with the men — the three alleged perpetrators and the purported driver of the car — and their well-to-do parents. In those sit-downs, which he taped, he demanded apologies. The young men complied.
“I regret what happened,” one said, his words captured on video. “I did great harm.”
“I don’t doubt it happened and we made a mistake,” another said. “We were wrong.”
Fernández hoped the expressions of contrition would
help his daughter. Instead, things got worse. Rumors of Daphne's
“promiscuity” began to spread on social media. In a note on
Facebook, she described those days as a “kick in the stomach.” “If I’ve
gone out drinking, if I have worn short skirts, like the great majority of
girls my age, that’s why they’re going to judge me?” she asked. “For that
reason, I deserved it?”
Out of options, the father and daughter filed a police report
against some of the families, among the city's wealthiest. The case
languished for months, until Fernández released the men's taped words to the
news media, sparking national outrage. Finally, arrest warrants were
issued. The first trial began a couple of months ago, after Diego Cruz, 21, was
extradited to Mexico from Spain. (In a statement, the four accused deny ever admitting to the rape. They say Daphne got inside
the Mercedes voluntarily because “she wanted the party to go on.")
It seemed as if Daphne might finally get something like justice.
Instead, her father's prediction came true. A judge found that Cruz
had touched the victim’s breasts and penetrated her with his fingers. But,
the judge said, that didn't make Cruz guilty of assault, because he'd acted
without “carnal intent.” The judge also found that while Daphne was forced into
the car, she was never “helpless.” Cruz was deemed innocent.
Daphne's story — its horrible beginning and unjust end — has
rippled across Mexico. Perhaps that's because the tale is so familiar. “To many
citizens” in Veracruz, “there is little difference between the rich and the
government, and between the government and the criminals,” according to
the New Yorker piece. The ferocious Zeta drug cartel has a near-monopoly over
the state. Eight out of 10 people there say they live in fear.
Since 2011, at least 15 journalists have been killed and hundreds of people
have vanished. (One human rights advocate, Father Alejandro Solalinde, called
the city “a factory of forced disappearances.”)Unsurprisingly, few trust the justice system and fewer come forward after an attack. In 2014, only 1 in 10 was reported to local authorities, according to Mexico’s National Institute of Statistics and Geography. The Mexican government’s National Institute for Women says more than 80 percent of sexual assaults are not reported, and barely 4.5 percent of criminals face sentencing in Mexico. A majority of victims told researchers that they didn't report because they didn't want to “waste their time,” the New Yorker piece said, citing a study.
There are two issues here - 1) the abuse/rape treatment of women and how rampant, and 2) how the trust in government/law/justice system is not just low, it is near non-existent due to corruption.
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