Silvana Jimenez has 26 marks. Spherical, linear or cross-shaped. They draw a long line on his back, over his neck, his arms to his hands, from the sternum to the pelvis. Twelve years have passed since a prisoner with temporary release stabbed him to death on a rural road in Casilda on New Year’s night. she was in a car her police boyfriend And it didn’t take him long to realize that it was Both plan to kill him. The man in uniform and the prisoner are arrested, punished, and time passes, but every time he sees those marks for Sylvana “everything comes back”: “None of them have my scars or marks after me, which will never go away.”
They threw him into the ditch thinking him to be dead, but Saved to sew at the cost of irreparable damage, At 35 he can’t force himself, heavy things fall from his hands, he breathes hard and is afraid to go out. She lives alone with her children, an 11-year-old boy and a 2-year-old girl, whom she could not have raised without the help of her parents. He could not work and suffered a very high psychological damage which an authoritative expert set at 60.12 percent.
for all In 2011, he filed a civil suit against the provincial state for failing in his duty of care. is that The attack was carried out by a caretaker police officer and a prisoner under his guard, Eleven years later, that process ended: Santa Fe province sentenced to pay compensation to the girl for 22 million pesos For the physical, moral, aesthetic and psychological damage that marked their lives.
This is a new bug. The file does not record convictions for the state’s reversible responsibility in crimes committed by prisoners on parole or during temporary release., There were twists and turns in the process. In 2018, the Civil, Commercial and Labor judge of Casilda Gerardo Marzi granted the suit. It determined one and a half million pesos for material damage and 750 thousand for moral damage. Silvana’s lawyer, Jose Lanza, recognized that the amount was too small and appealed.
Judges from the Rosario Civil Chamber Oscar Puccinelli, Gerardo Muoz and María de los Milagros Lottie supported the sentence, but ordered a review of the amount. In July of last year, Judge Clelia Gomez raised it to 9 million. One figure, added to the interest, gives 22,786,554 pesos. It was installed in the form it closed the file this year. Based on this calculation, the court ordered the province to include the compensation in the next year’s official budget.
>> Read more: “They left me dead in a ditch and I only prayed to get out”
Before January 1, 2010, Silvana’s life was very different. At 26, she worked as a nanny and lived with her parents and eight siblings in a country house near Casilda. He went to a gym where he met the policeman Ral Jess Vitaro, He contacted her through mutual friends and they started dating. They had a formal courtship and maintained a parallel relationship with Silvana. They saw each other on Thursdays or at parties with friends.
At 1:30 p.m. on the first day of 2010, police came looking for her at a house in the center of Casilda, which she cared for. in the absence of the owners. In his black BMW with gray stripes, he crossed Route 33 and He stops on an old country road that leads to Fuentes and leads to Silvana’s house. Then A fat man with curly hair came, opened the passenger door and threatened the girl with a gun. “Supposedly it was a robbery, but he attacked me with nothing else. He asked for my cell phone. I had the cell phone, the keys, the money and everything was left there, in the car.”
The attacker left the weapon at the window along with several knives. He covered her mouth with a cloth, tied her hands with strings and made her kneel beside a ditch. He took off her shoes, thrashed her and started stabbing her with a big knife. all that time Vitar, who had a service weapon in the car, stood still., He realized that it was a plan to kill him and pretended to be dead when the policeman got out of the car and kicked him in the head. “That’s it, come on” He told his friend. They threw him in a ditch, leaving him as dead.
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Photo: Silvina Salinas / The Capital
The girl waited for the car to leave and got out of the ditch. Bathed in blood and mud, like a ghost in the dark, he pointed to a vehicle that managed to pass through the place. The driver saw a bundle, called the police, and then recognized Silvana, the maternal grandmother of his children.
An ambulance took her to the provincial hospital in Rosario. On the way, Silvana warns the nurse: “Raul Vitar did this to me.” He suffered 17 stab wounds affecting his lungs, diaphragm, stomach and left kidney. He required two transfusions and respiratory support. He managed to recover but did not breathe normally or exercise again.
The attack was so severe that it mobilized the entire leadership of the IV regional unit. The owner of Vitar went in search of him to a country house where he was celebrating the New Year with friends after the brutal attack. Earlier, he had stopped near his house to get two bottles of champagne. “Boss, I sent a little,” admitted the policeman. They said that Hired prisoner Juan Carlos Valentini to “scare” Silvana Because that secret affair jeopardized their formal bond.
in your car They confiscated his service weapon and the 38-caliber revolver used in the incident., from his cell phone He retrieved messages with Valentini, for whom he was a caretaker in the mayor’s office of the Casilda regional unit and whom he offered between 500 and one thousand pesos., The prisoner had obtained a special permit for end of the year holidays. Silvana’s wound-covering knife is found from his house.
>> Read more: She was near death after being attacked by a prisoner and now sues the state
Both were sentenced to 5 and a half years for attempted murder with the promise of remuneration and betrayal in brief trials of the old written criminal system. In a direct case of gender violence, the frame did not include that perspective. Later The reform that included the crime of murder in 2012 will be prosecuted today under that figure, Vitar served his sentence in house arrest and then moved to another province. Valentini was granted parole and did not return. No one responded to a civil lawsuit that called for them to repair the victim in solidarity with the province.
ruling says that The state is responsible for the actions of its dependents in the exercise of their functions., Although Vitar was off duty that night, he reveals that he planned the attack ahead of time and used his contacts as a policeman. whereas Valentini was a prisoner to be guarded by a state agency: “This duty of state custody was not modified by the temporary exit granted to the prisoner,” the ruling says.
“It can be confirmed without any doubt that the acts committed by Vitar and Valentini were possible because of the police status of Vitar and the quality of the offender in Valentini, both of which were in the class of the provincial state, which is responsible for the behavior. Considered “he adds.
“That’s a good sentence—says the lawyer Lanza—”. But It’s unfair after such a slow process that Silvana should wait until the end of next year to get his compensation, They never offered her help or a place to live, she was never even seen by a psychologistTo Casilda, she demands to “end everything” to “close this story”: “I’m more afraid to go out now than before. It was very difficult and it is very difficult. I feel anger for years and am starting to process what happened, but I see scars on my body and everything comes back.
in first person
“I sleep on my back with a fan, because The cuts he has made in my lungs leave me breathless. I can’t turn my head because it pulls my neck. If it’s cold, I bow down and stay small like a hundred-year-old grandmother.: My back starts to twist and I can’t straighten until I get heat because my spine is bent due to the cut”.
>> Read more: Oral hearing on policeman for attempted murder of lover
Silvana described the ailments in his handwriting in a letter he presented before the civil court that processed his lawsuit. there it says he can’t lift heavy things, that his hands don’t react as before and things slip, Sometimes he has reflex movements as if he is being stabbed. But in addition to the physical cost, which leads her to “not being able to wash with a brush or lift more than a liter of water,” she tells La Capital there are psychological consequences.
“I leave my house to take my son to school, which is two blocks away, and nothing else. I continue with fear of being aware, as I crossed paths with (former police officer Raul) Vitar. and he has done wrong to me.”, Psychological expertise is compared graphically to how Sylvana’s quality of life decreased after the attack, when she lost space for fun, entertainment, work or study, and added pain and sleep problems. Physical examination has found 26 marks on his arms, neck and torso. The longest, 25 cm, begins below the sternum and ends four inches below the navel. Silvana is a short stature woman. The linear sum of the cuts is 75 cm: half its height.
