Bureaucracy leaves a rape victim without a public defender: "Without papers, she couldn't prove that she didn't have enough income"

BarcelonaYaqui does not want her full name published or to be recognized in any image because she has not explained to most of her environment what she experienced in an apartment in El Prat de Llobregat in April 2021. At that time, she did not have papers and her only option to find work was to advertise on the internet offering to take care of children and the elderly. Today, the Barcelona Court is judging a man who contacted her using a false name and made her believe that he wanted her to take care of his mother. But once in the apartment, he allegedly sexually assaulted her and threatened her with deportation, according to the indictments of the Prosecutor's Office and Yaqui's lawyer.

In both, the sentence requested for the accused is 12 years in prison for the crimes of sexual assault, degrading treatment and threats. Frightened by the threat of deportation, Yaqui took months to report the case, and when she did, she ran into a bureaucratic loophole that has left her unable to have a public defender, even though she meets the requirements to have one. The reason: she lacked papers and could not prove her level of income.

During a conversation with the ARA, Yaqui shows the letter she received 13 months after the attack, when she had reported it and the case was ongoing. The Generalitat informed her that she had not proven that she met the economic requirements to continue being assisted by the public defender who had assisted her until then. "How should I prove that I did not have sufficient income if I did not have any contract and could not file my tax return?" she asks. Through her lawyer, she appealed the denial of free legal assistance, explaining that she was an immigrant, had no papers or formal work with which she could prove her level of income, but her appeal has not prospered. "When you are an undocumented migrant, they leave you without many things because you do not have papers that make you feel that you are worthy because of the identity card you have," Yaqui criticizes.

In this regard, the Justice Department has limited itself to stating its desire that victims be able to exercise their right to free legal assistance in accordance with the provisions of the law. In fact, as of October, the entry into force of the law on judicial efficiency will expand the coverage of free legal assistance and those who report sexual crimes, like Yaqui, will not have to prove their income to receive it. The same law will extend coverage to women who are victims of crimes against sexual freedom, female genital mutilation, forced marriage and sexual harassment.

For Yaqui, hiring a lawyer was not a viable option and, without a court-appointed lawyer, she would have gone to trial without a private representative. "The lawyer told me 'I want to go with you to the end'," she says, recalling how, due to her conviction in the case, the lawyer offered to represent her for a nominal fee compared to her usual fees. For Yaqui, it has also meant an effort to save money in recent years. "She advised me not to go alone, because at the trial he [the accused] would be advised to defend himself. It was hard for me to gather the money, but she didn't want to let it go," says Yaqui, grateful to the lawyer who has represented her throughout the proceedings and who will also be at today's trial.

A "misunderstanding" made her file a complaint

Yaqui took nine months to report the assault that is being tried today out of fear and at the doors of the trial she admits that she was on the verge of not doing so. In fact, a "misunderstanding" is what made her decide. With her phone number published on Milanuncios asking for work, she received dozens of messages and calls. Once, a man had proposed to pay her in exchange for sex. She rejected him, never saw him and over time forgot about him. Until the Mossos d'Esquadra contacted her asking about that man, a resident of Cornellà de Llobregat.

The police were investigating him for having sexually assaulted another woman, in a case very similar to Yaqui's, and when they found the messages he had sent her they thought that she could be another victim of that man. She was not, but that made her decide to report what she had experienced in El Prat a few months before. "Without that misunderstanding I would not have reported it," she says. Almost four years later, and looking forward to the ordeal of the proceedings and the trial, she is glad she filed that complaint. "I am doing it for myself and for other women," she says.

Years later, and pregnant with her second child, Yaqui arrives at the trial "totally changed" compared to the time of the attack. "I'm not the same. I'm much more defensive, I want to be much more isolated and it's hard for me to trust," she says about the psychological aftereffects she notices as a result of the attack and which she works on in therapy.

Five women in one week

In fact, the man accused of sexually assaulting Yaqui contacted at least five women in a single week, and each case has been investigated separately. In Yaqui's case, he supposedly called her for a job interview and to meet his mother, who she was supposed to take care of. The man, who was 68 years old at the time, presented himself as an influential and well-off person and always called her with a hidden number. He also refused to tell her his address, and for the supposed interview he told her that he would pick her up at the metro exit.

They met at the Bellvitge stop and, after driving around for an hour, he took her to the apartment where her mother supposedly lived. But when they went in, the woman was not there, and the man picked up a note from the floor where her sister supposedly told him that she had left to take her mother to the doctor. Once Yaqui was in the apartment, he locked it and asked her to sit on the sofa. She took out her mobile phone to send her location to her then-partner, and the defendant reprimanded her for using the phone. He even took it from her and prevented her from closing the bathroom door to keep an eye on her when she tried to contact her boyfriend, according to the indictments on which today's trial will be based. In the same flat, he allegedly sexually assaulted her, arguing that she had not really come to look for work but for sex.