QCOSTARICA — On Sunday, April 9, 2023, a girl who had just graduated from school was walking alone down the street in a mountainous town in Cartago, when a man with his face covered quickly passed by and snatched what looked like a doll from her arms, but the scene was continuity of a tragedy.
The girl had become pregnant at the age of 11 and what was taken from her was not a toy, but her daughter Keibril, 10 months old. The man was apparently the little mother’s stepfather and allegedly her rapist, the baby’s biological father, the police presume. He lived with them until he was arrested as the main suspect in the sexual assault of his partner’s daughter.
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The police captured him one day after taking the baby he had with the minor to avoid a paternity confirmation test that would have directly incriminated him, according to the hypothesis of judicial authorities.
At that time, search groups of up to 200 people were organized, including neighbors, relatives, police, and first responders to try to find the baby. The country watched in suspense.
Now the suspect, who was imprisoned years ago for drug sales, is serving preventive detention while the investigation progresses. The Patronato Nacional de la Infancia (PANI) – National Children’s Trust – took charge of the care of the teenage mother and her siblings, although the authority does not detail whether they are in a shelter, in a home with relatives or cared for by an allied NGO.
Nothing was ever known about the baby whose photograph flooded the pages of the press for several weeks. Almost 10 months later, the baby’s whereabouts remain a mystery. No one can be sure that little Keibril is alive. All this in the midst of strong political pressure on the PANI for alleged negligence in the care of the child mother after her school warned that she was pregnant, when she was still one of the many anonymous minors who live with her predator.
Although the story has disappeared from the media and public opinion, there will surely be new publications at the end of one year on April 9, or before, in March, when the suspect’s period of precautionary detention ends and perhaps he can be released, while investigations continue.
“He doesn’t come back to town,” says a neighboring merchant. “If he does it’s going to be very bad for him,” another local woman tells us anonymously and remembers the rumors that there were about sexual abuse in that family’s home.
The case that shocked the country, and became a topic in the press conferences of President Rodrigo Chaves, served to remind the population that child sexual abuse continues to occur with the usual factors, but is now aggravated and at the same time disguised by a cocktail of contemporary emergencies: the social effects of the pandemic, the weakening of the state protection system and a context of violence and drugs that have become the main national problem.
“There are many serious stories like that from Cartago and they are so shocking, day by day, but all this happens in silence,” says Andre Guerrero, social worker at the National Children’s Hospital and university professor of courses on childhood, human rights and violence of genre.
Óscar Valverde, director of the Paniamor Foundation, which works with children, and specialist psychologist Ana Lorena Rojas Breddy agree, they are rather surprised by this report on child sexual abuse. “A long time ago, this society stopped talking about this, as if it became silent,” said Valverde, despite observing an increase in risk conditions for girls, boys and adolescents, without the State showing signs of having the capacity to answer.
Translated and adapted from SemanarioUniversidad.com
