La Paz.- A Bolivian court pre-emptively sent a healer charged with the alleged sexual rape of a 16-year-old teenager when she was practicing a clean one, the State Attorney General’s Office reported on Friday.The Criminal Investigation Court of the town of Uncía, in the Andean region of Potosí, provided for the pre-trial detention of José A.P. in the Centro de Readaptación Productiva San Miguel, in that same municipality, pointed out by the departmental prosecutor, Roxana Choque.
The prosecutor in the case requested the application of precautionary measures and “the judicial authority ordered his pre-trial detention as there were procedural risks of danger of escape and obstruction,” Choque said, quoted in a statement from the Public Prosecutor’s Office.The man is charged with the alleged crime of aggravated rape, according to the same source. The event dates back to January 2019, when the youngest went to the healer to make a clean and he asked her to buy coca leaves and a bottle of singani, a grape distillate typical of Bolivia, pointed out the Fiscalía.Al turn the child, the man told him to dress up , be “ch’alle” or bless yourself by “consuming alcohol” and then lie down in bed “for healing to be effective,” the statement states. The teenager was knocked unconscious after drinking, which was presumably exploited by the healer to rape her. The minor awoke semi-naked and in the street, near a coliseum, where she was assisted by the neighbors and transferred to a hospital, according to the Bolivian Prosecutor’s Office. The event was then reported to the authorities for their investigation. In the first twelve days of 2020 Bolivia recorded the same number of femicides, in addition to 683 reports of violence and 168 cases of rape, according to official information. These figures prompted the interim Government to declare 2020 as the Year of Combating Femicide and Infanticide in the country, in order to implement concrete policies to protect women and minors from violence.
