Olga Lucia Castillo could never bring to justice the men who raped her in Bogota when she was pregnant with her daughter. Twelve years later, she is putting up the fight of her life to have a U.S. Army officer and a Mexican-born contractor indicted because, according to her, they raped her daughter at the military base in Melgar.
The older of her two daughters was sexually abused at a military base in this city, 62 miles from Bogota, in August 2007, according to a criminal charge filed by Castillo at the Colombian prosecutor's office.
The suspects are U.S. Army sergeant Michael Coen and Mexican-born contractor César Ruiz, whose arrest was ordered by prosecutors following testimonies. There is no forensic evidence to implicate them, and after both suspects were taken out of the country under diplomatic immunity, the investigation could not move forward.
Castillo is outraged and does not want the crime to go unpunished this time, as it happened in her case. She remembered bitterly that her husband had left her at the time, arguing that she had let the men rape her.
"I will not stop until justice is done," Castillo told El Nuevo Herald in Melgar. "This must be punished."
She was not even allowed to enter the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, where she wanted to demand information on the investigation. She then tried to present the case before the Colombian congress last month, and two congresswomen opposed her presentation arguing that they would not allow intimate "pornographic" descriptions on the congress floor.
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