translated from Spanish: Court of Appeals definitively condemns the aggressors of the lesbophobic attack against Carolina Torres through the Anti-Discrimination Law

In February 2019, Carolina Torres (24) was attacked when she was holding hands with her partner prior to Valentine’s Day. The perpetrators of the crime assaulted her because of her sexual orientation at the intersection of Laguna del Inca and Laguna Sur avenues, pudahuel commune. After the incident, the young woman was admitted to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of
the Central Post of Santiago with a skull fracture and internal bleeding.
During July of this year, the First Court of Oral Trial in criminal matters of Santiago announced that the perpetrators of the crime, Reynaldo and Miguel Ángel Cortés Arancibia will be sentenced to the effective sentences of 15 and 12 years in prison, respectively, after having verified the crime of homicide qualified as frustrated, aggravated by having been motivated by the sexual orientation and gender expression of the victim, in direct allusion to the Anti-Discrimination Law.
After that, the defense of the Cortez brothers filed an appeal for annulment against the sentence which was recently rejected by the Court of Appeals of Santiago. The ruling was unanimous, since the Eleventh Chamber of the High Court – composed of ministers Jessica González, María Loreto Gutiérrez and lawyer Francisco Javier Ovalle – ruled out the error in the classification of the crime made by the Court, which convicted the perpetrators of the crime.
“That in this way it is noted that the defendants took advantage of the situation of defenselessness of the victim, there was a common intent in attacking her mortally by the perpetrators, with whom there had been a previous verbal exchange and once the common objective was achieved and estimating that the victim no longer offered any possibility of attack towards them, continued to beat her and subsequently fled,” the ruling states.
For its part, the Iguales Foundation, an organization that advocates for the inclusion of sexual diversity in Chilean society and accompanied Carolina with her family in the legal process, relates the importance of convictions like these. “It is important that convictions exist because they mean that acts of violence are followed by the consequences, which is to face the law. Then we can fly this flag that is still a sad flag, but finally, a victory flag in which this time, at least justice was done,” adds the executive director of Fundación Iguales, Isabel Amor.
 
In addition, the director of the Legal Area of Fundación Iguales, Jorge Lucero, said: “We will continue working on supporting victims and in the fight to achieve a reform of the Anti-Discrimination Law. It is unheard of that in nine years – since it came into force – it has only been applied fifteen times. We are happy for Carolina and her family, but we will continue to work for an improvement that provides real guarantees to LGBTI people.”

Original source in Spanish

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