translated from Spanish: Man assaults woman in Mexico City and she ends up detained too

Carolina Hidalgo denounces that on September 8 she was verbally and physically assaulted by a man of 1.90 meters in a pharmacy of the Cuauhtémoc mayor’s office, in Mexico City. No one interceded to defend her, she says, and when she wanted to denounce the alleged aggressor, she ended up arrested along with him and admitted to what is popularly known as the bull. 
The alleged assault on Carolina Hidalgo ended up typified by the authorities as injuries, as if it had been a street fight, “as if they had found two drunks outside a canteen,” he says. 
She, a veterinarian by profession and a lesbian woman, is sure, as is her lawyer, who was the victim of a double act of discrimination. Her assailant began to insult her, she explains, especially because of her physical appearance, which does not fit the standard accepted by society for a woman. 

Carolina wears very short hair and does not wear makeup. He, she denounces, called her lencha, feminazi, crazy old woman. Then, she says, he pushed her and threw punches at her. Authorities treated the incident as injuries just because of that, he says, because of his physical appearance. 
“The police who arrive at the place decide to present them for injuries to the Civic Court CUH-02 of the Cuauhtémoc mayor’s office instead of in the public prosecutor’s office for discrimination, physical attack, and threats from a man of 1.90 meters to a woman, although Carolina what she is requesting is that: that a complaint be raised, but the police seem to have no idea what the crimes involved in the aggression are or how to identify them, ” says Fabiola Higareda, Carolina’s lawyer and gender specialist. 
There is a lack of training for the police, adds the lawyer, “to whom they give a few hours of workshop nothing more, but with that they do not change years of an ideology that is present in the bulk of the population and that is evident when none of those who witness the aggression helps Caro.” 

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This is despite the fact that there is the Protocol of Police Action of the Secretariat of Public Security of Mexico City to Preserve the Human Rights of People Who Belong to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Transvestite and Intersex Population (LGBTTTI).
It states that the Undersecretariat of Institutional Development, through the University of the Police of Mexico City, will be the body in charge of promoting the training and updating of the courses aimed at the police of Mexico City, necessary for the implementation of the Protocol. 
And that the training and updating courses will contain, at least, the following subjects: non-discrimination and equality of the LGBTTTI population; principles of attention to members of the LGBTTTI population who are victims of crime; empathy against discrimination and the police as protector of the human rights of the LGBTTTI population. 
The protocol also establishes that the action of the police when it comes to people from this group will have a differential and specialized approach, with the application of the highest standards in the field of human rights. 
“Police authorities will not treat LGBTTTI persons as suspected or responsible for the commission of a misdemeanor or crime solely because of their sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, and sex characteristics,” the document says. 
But none of that applied in the case, the lawyer and Carolina denounce. “They began to treat me as if I were the one who had committed a crime, they did not let me leave the civic court or smoke a cigar, while my aggressor could be outside and I even had a police escort who guarded me all the time.” 
Animal Político asked the Secretary of Public Security of Mexico City to know what had happened in this case and how the capital police are trained to know how to proceed and guarantee the rights of the LGBTI population, but until the close of this edition there was no response. 
This portal also requested a position from the Legal Department of Mexico City on the performance of the staff of the civic court and what training they receive, to which through an information card they responded that on September 8, 2021, two citizens were presented by personnel of the Secretary of Citizen Security before the Judge Person, in accordance with the provisions of article 26 of the current Civic Culture Law, which in its section VI, indicates as an infraction the injury to a person as long as the injuries that are caused in accordance with the medical opinion take less than fifteen days to heal. 
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“It is specified that this infraction is class D, whose sanction runsIt is 20 to 36 hours of arrest, or 10 to 18 hours of work in favor of the community. In this regard, I would like to inform you that from reading the file in the internal archives of the Civic Court in question, it is clear that both parties involved in the events accepted the commission of the infringement, that is, that they carried out actions in order to injure the opposing party, so they accepted the sanction derived, and in the same way they expressed the refusal of a conciliation,” the card says.
The judge and the court clerk, the text adds, “acted in accordance with their powers, referred to in article 67 of the Civic Justice Law of Mexico City, and carried out due process.” 
On the other hand, it is reported that the Executive Directorate of Civic Justice has a constant training program, which includes: fundamental elements of human rights, gender and gender violence and the struggle for equality, among others. 
On the response of the Ministry that Carolina admitted to having committed an infraction, her lawyer points out that: “the only option given to her was to accept that there were injuries by both parties so that they had an arrest, both, including the aggressor, of 36 hours. The advice they gave him was bad throughout the process, to begin with they should not have gone to the Civic, they do not know how to identify when there is violence against the LGBTTI population.”
Aggression from zero to 100
The events occurred on September 8, around 8 in the morning, when Carolina entered the neighborhood pharmacy where she has her veterinarian’s office. I was just going for a toilet paper. He was taking care of her, she says, when a man came in abruptly asking for a mask. 
“His attitude was to attend to me immediately, the lady does it, gives him the mask and still asks for a serum, that’s when I ask the person behind the counter to please finish attending me because it’s my turn, that exacerbated the man from zero to 100, he started telling me that I am a lencha who wants everyone to attend to him always, an old pinche, a machorra, lesbian, feminazi. He seemed to locate me from the veterinarian, apparently he is a neighbor of the neighborhood, I had not seen him before, “says Carolina. 
The vet says she ignored it and asked the saleswoman to talk to the manager to ask for a shift system and avoid those problems. 
“Then he tells me to shut up, that my mother is going to break me, that she knows where I live, she tells me and claims that she is more of a client than me. I ask that they charge me, send me an invoice and help me security because it has already become something physical. The security one approaches, but stays about 2 and a half meters away and does not intervene. At that moment I realize that I am alone and decide that I am going to proceed legally. I look for my cell phone to have evidence, I start recording and I ask for your data and to repeat everything you told me.” 
As also stated in the complaint of the facts that Carolina was able to do until the day after, she tries to take the plates of the man’s car, and he tells her “come to the plates and I will crack you”. 
Carolina’s recording, to which Animal Político had access, is abruptly interrupted, “it was because my phone flew out when he threw a frontal blow at me.”
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Carolina relates that in the face of the attack, she defended herself. “I kicked him and tried to stop him because he wanted to run away, so he kicks me in the left knee. I screamed for help, but despite being surrounded by people, no one intervened. Only one man told him to leave me, because he kept pulling, pushing and scratching me, as I tried to get to his car.” 
When the police showed up, Carolina recounts, “he says I tied him up, that he’s an older adult, that he has AIDS, that he suffers from deep depression, that he’s medicated and that I’m a crazy old lady.”
The police, says the veterinarian, asked her what she wanted to do. “It was weird to me to be asked, as if there was no procedure. I told them I wanted to file a complaint, because that couldn’t stay that way. I thought they would take us to the public prosecutor’s office, but instead they took us to the CUH-02 civic court.”
Carolina assures that the person who received her there never identified herself, “they tell me that the evidence I have (the video) is useless, she asks for the version of each one of us and after that she tells us that the matter will only be resolved in three ways: with community service, fines or forgiveness.” 
As Carolina decides to go ahead with the process, some lawyers arrive who present themselves as from the Women’s Secretariat. “Only one gives me her first name, Amalia. Yes they are empathetic, but when they tell them that the man is of the third age, they do not verify it and I they say that he is an older adult and that there is not much to do, when I heard later in the hospital where they valued us for the blows that he admits to being 55 years old, that is not being an older adult.” 
Among the other irregularities that Carolina relates are that just to take her to the hospital for evaluation for the injury to her knee because of the kick that the man gave her, they wanted to transfer her in the same patrol car as the alleged aggressor, who at least a police officer intimidated her before the transfer, who did not give her or let her read the result of the orthopedic assessment; from which she came out with her leg in a plaster and the indication that she should be immobilized for ten days. 
Upon returning to the court, “we are presented with the civic judge and he tells me that the injuries do not exceed fifteen days and that I am not there to show evidence or to make allegations of any kind, only to receive a sanction and that does not include community service, only 36 hours of arrest, payment of damages or forgiveness.” 
The veterinarian says that she had already decided to grant the pardon, on the advice of her lawyer to do so and then file a complaint. Faced with that decision, they are evicted from the courtroom while they prepare the documents to close the case, but then, says Carolina, the alleged aggressor and his companions began to photograph her and her family, who had already come forward to support her, outside the courthouse. 
“I tell the police who escort me that if that is not illegal and tell me no, that I can also take pictures if I want, we decided then also to take pictures of them, but the man began to verbally assault my brother, then assaulted my wife, and a married couple friend of a woman and a person with non-binary presentation.” 
Faced with this, Carolina decides not to grant forgiveness. “Another judge calls us with whom I had not dealt before, the license Marisol Hernández, and angrily says that she has been informed that there is no longer an agreement, and in a violent way and raising her voice she tells me: look how you are, do you want to leave like this in those conditions (under arrest for 36 hours)? I replied that if the only way for my aggressor to have any consequences was to be detained myself, then that was going to be done.” 
It is there, says the veterinarian, when the judge reduces the aggression, saying “that we look like small children and that we have surely had a lawsuit since long before.” 
Carolina is transferred to the same unit as her alleged assailant, with a police officer at the wheel, she says, who drives without the precaution of carrying an injured person, who had also not been given pain medication for the leg injury. 
Carolina also lists among the irregularities she experienced: the rude treatment of the authorities, who even heard the man several times while talking on the phone use derogatory terms towards her and her companions because of her appearance and sexual orientation, as well as throwing expletives and threats against the veterinarian and never put a stop to her. 
She also denounces that she was not allowed to leave the civic court or to smoke a cigar, until she agreed to grant the pardon, and that she was guarded all the time by a police, while the alleged aggressor could move freely. 
In what is known as the bull, Carolina says that it was where she finally received a more dignified treatment, “they treated me with respect and kindness, I spent the night there and the next day they let me out, because friends and acquaintances moved and achieved the order of release with the help of the direction of the Center for Attention to Victims of Crime.” 
For the aggressions she suffered, Carolina has already raised, with the guidance and support of her lawyer, a complaint, of which Animal Político has a copy, before the Prosecutor’s Office for the Investigation of Crimes Committed against Priority Attention Groups, including the LGBTTI Population, for discrimination, which provokes or incites hatred or violence, and threats. 
This prosecutor’s office will send the breakdown of the facts, explains the lawyer, to the Prosecutor’s Office of public servants, which is responsible for investigating whether there was negligence or omission on the part of the authorities. 
Carolina is waiting for what results, while she has also processed a protection order and a restraining order so that the alleged aggressor cannot approach her, given the threats he made, although neither she nor her lawyer know if the man is already aware of this. 
“What I hope is not that they arrest the aggressor or that they roll heads, but I want the process to be reviewed to know if the system failed so that the same thing does not happen to other people,” Carolina closes. 
 
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Original source in Spanish