The Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City (FGJ-CDMX) obtained an arrest warrant against writer and diplomat Andrés Roemer for the crime of rape. The order was referred to a complaint filed in March, in which the victim charged him with the crime of rape.
The order comes 70 days after he announced that he was opening an investigative folder for public social media complaints about harassment and various acts of sexual violence, and when, according to a new testimony, he is no longer in Mexico and went to live in Israel.
Last February 23, it was revealed that the Sexual Offences Prosecutor’s Office had opened a folder of investigation of the case by “criminal news”, that is, by disclosing in networks testimonies that a crime had been committed.
By this time, more than 10 stories had been published, anonymous or named, through the Twitter account of the collective Mexican United Journalists (PUM), after on February 15 the dancer Itzel Schnaas broadcast a video of almost 7 minutes in which she detailed her own experience of sexual abuse by the writer, who, under the pretext of giving space to her projects at the City of Ideas festival, cited her with deception at her home in the Rome colony, took her to a movie theater in the basement, touched her without her consent and masturbated in front of her.
Schnaas tells in interview with Animal Politics that she learned by the media that the folder had been opened and that there was an open invitation to go and testify. Then with another of the victims who had given her testimony to who magazine who had already contacted her, Fernanda Lascurain, came to advise the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women (Conavim), which recommended that they report to the prosecutor’s office bunker and they did so.
By early March, several victims had already managed to communicate with each other to explore the possibility of legal advice together. Although in some media it was said that there were already more complaints filed, none of them had yet acted.
“From there, rather gradually the victims, who did not know each other, knew nothing about each other, we got in touch to think about making a collective complaint. I think the voice of the denunciation was being built, the desire to denounce, but in fear time the fear, to do something that was not in anyone’s plans, that assaulted them suddenly, but which also had the gigantic need to speak, to find comfort, I think,” he says.
In those contacts and that search they obtained two possibilities of lawyers, some opted for one option, others for the other, and there were those who followed by their own means.
It also influences that although the testimonies of the modus operandi of the alleged aggressor are very similar, when offering them work, making an appointment in a place near their home, then changing the plans to have them at home and there assaulting them, there are different levels of violence.
In Schnaas’s case, it is criminally criminalated as sexual abuse, which would not involve imprisonment, which is dictated when it comes to rape. But to strengthen the complaint, he explains, the deprivation of her liberty was included, having locked her in the cinema.
“It’s also important to say that the legal and human rights and gender team that has been supporting each of the victims has had to generate strategies to be able to access justice,” he says.
As far as Schnaas knows, at least 10 victims have already come to testify and file their cases, two of them independently, the others with one of the options of lawyers they sought together, and there were three or four others who would also join the formal lawsuits.
More than two months after the first complaint
It wasn’t the first time Roemer had been publicly denounced. In March 2019, during the #MeToo movement in Mexico, Journalists Unidas Mexicanas (PUM) published three anonymous allegations of sexual abuse and harassment.
Two years later, last February 15, it was when Itzel Schnaas posted the video telling her experience, which occurred just over a year ago.
Behind the video came a new wave of testimonies. One of the three original whistleblowers went publicly to expand her story: she was journalist Monserrat Ortiz and revealed that her case had been even more serious, as she came to the rape.
In a matter of days, 15 testimonies were already added. It was when the FGJ CDMX opened an investigative folder and invited victims to come directly to file a formal complaint, after which UNESCO ended its relationship with Roemer as a goodwill ambassador.
PUM collected, with court on March 5, 61 stories of women claiming having suffered some form of violence on Roemer’s part, although not all wanted to make them public out of fear, because they did not feel ready or because they were preparing legal action. Of these, 31 were published, more than half with the name of the women, and of which 4 were for rape.
After that, he stopped broadcasting the television show “Head” that he drove every Sunday in DNA 40. And on Monday, March 8, International Women’s Day, the writer had the facade of his house covered, although there were pints and demonstrations in the surrounding area.
Weeks passed without new information from the allegations or the investigative folder, until last week Indigo Report published the testimony of a girl who in Tel Aviv, Israel, was presented with him under the name Andres Rosemberg, on the grounds that he had just come to live in the city and was looking to meet Mexicans. But as with the testimonies of sexual violence in Mexico City and San Francisco, where she was consul, she told her of labor projects she could invite and ended up making sexual innuendos.
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