Fifteen months after alleged attack involving wealthy youths from politically connected families, woman speaks out in hopes of forcing proper investigation

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

A Mexican rape victim and her family have made public details of her attack in an attempt to shame prosecutors into action over a case implicating members of wealthy and politically connected families.



“I’m not hiding. I’m not saying anything but the truth. I have nothing to repent,” wrote the woman in a statement posted on Facebook late on Monday.

“I’ve gone drinking. I’ve gone to parties. I’ve worn short skirts like many girls my age ... and for that I’m going to be judged? For that I deserved what happened?” wrote the woman on Facebook.

The incident has prompted outrage in Mexico, amid allegations that prosecutors have not properly investigated the crime. This week, Los Porkys de Costa de Oro – the name given the group of alleged assailants – was trending on Twitter.

The attack occurred early on 1 January 2015 in the affluent city of Boca del Río, in Veracruz state, some 400km east of Mexico City. The victim – who was 17 at the time – was abducted by four youths while leaving a party, before being sexually assaulted by an attacker her family says is the son of a local politician with allies in the state government.

Fifteen months later, the family has taken their story public, hoping to force an investigation into a case which has highlighted the privilege and impunity enjoyed by those with power and political connections.

The victim’s father recently released a video in which four young men accused of carrying out the attack apologized and acknowledged “the damage we’ve done”.

In an open letter, the father named the boys’ families and accused them of acting as “accomplices”.

“You have a daughter the same age as mine,” he wrote, addressing one of the alleged perpetrator’s fathers. “How much is your daughter’s happiness worth?”



State prosecutor Luis Ángel Bravo rejected allegations of “influence peddling”, telling reporters the investigation has proceeded “promptly”.



Edgar Cinta Pagola, the alleged assailants’ lawyer said they had not apologized, and denied any wrongdoing. “What we’re seeing is the indiscriminate use of media and social networks to steamroller my clients,” he told MVS radio.

The episode has offered a rude reminder of impunity in Mexico, where the rich and well-connected are seldom held to account for their actions. Their children – known as mirreyes (or “my kings”) – are often accused of reveling in their money and privilege in a country where almost half the population lives in poverty.



“Mexican justice is usually a docile creature in the face of the upper class and ferocious against those who occupy the lowest levels of our social structure,” wrote Ricardo Raphael, the author of a book on the phenomenon, Mirreynato: the Other Inequality.

“The scandalous [rape] episode offers an exhibition of some of the mechanisms that produce impunity in Mexico,” he wrote in the newspaper El Universal.

Nearly 95% of crimes in Mexico go unreported.

The government’s Executive Commission for Attention to Victims reports three million sexual crimes were committed over the past five years in Mexico with most offenses not brought to the authorities. Criminals cases were opened in only about 10% of the reported cases.



Some observers say the case has caught the public’s attention, in part, because of the upper-class origins of both the victim and alleged attackers in a society in which the elite tends to stick together and avoids public squabbles.



“Because these mirreyes are going against one of their own, all the old codes went down the drain,” said sociologist Rodolfo Soriano Núñez. “Had this been a poor girl from a public high school, no one would be talking about this.”