“He asked me if I knew how to do a massage and said he would teach me“said Witness C at the trial. No one could see her, only hear her: To preserve her identity and integrity, not to hurt her again and to prevent her from meeting the man she accused, she announced via Zoom, with the black screen, from the court office, who defended her position of not being seen in public when the defendant’s defense questioned her and asked her to turn on the camera so they could find out who he was.
With his voiceover, he assured the session that the man they showed him on camera was just that Walter Barrientos GarciaHe also stated that he sexually assaulted her when she was 16, and that for three months, between November 2012 and January 2013, he forced her into prostitution for long hours in an apartment in the Recoleta neighborhood of Buenos Aires that served as a “massage parlor.”
“From the first moment I knew how old he was and also that he had a son“The witness, now 29, said during the trial who was in those days: While looking for a job to get off the streets, he went on a date because of an online ad offering work as a masseuse.. The “employer” was Barrientos García He has just been sentenced to 15 years in prison.
The Federal Criminal Court Oral No. 6 upheld the sentencing request of Prosecutor Gabriela Bijón, although it differed in the classification of the accusation.
The court, composed solely of Judge Adrian Grunberg, rejected the defense’s arguments – among others, a request for statute of limitations – and found Barrientos guilty as an author criminally responsible for a crime. Sexual assault with repeated physical access on two occasions, in actual competition with the promotion of prostitution of a minor under the age of 18, which was aggravated by deception..
As the Public Prosecutor’s Office reported on its website www.fiscales.gob.ar, Prosecutor Baygon and Assistant Prosecutors Claudia Ribor and Lautaro Fichter, instead of promoting prostitution, requested the conviction of Barrientos García for the crime of trafficking in persons under 18 years of age – in the form of recruitment and harboring -, aggravated by deception and exploitation of a state of vulnerability, in real competition with sexual assault. With physical access, it was repeated on two occasions, as author.
Barrientos, 60, who is incarcerated at Marcos Paz Federal Prison Complex II, said his last words yesterday before the sentencing: “The lawyers have already said everything I have to say. That’s all I can say. With all due respect and many thanks and blessings to you.“.
The investigation began in 2021 with an anonymous complaint on line 145 and led to the intervention of the Office of the Public Prosecutor for Combating Human Trafficking and Exploitation (Protex). The victim then expanded her testimony in Giselle’s room in front of specialists from the General Directorate for Support, Guidance and Protection of Victims (DOVIC) of the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
It was established during the trial that the victim first contacted Barrientos in November 2012, through a job advertisement website. This way, schedule a meeting with the employer at an apartment designated for the massage service where you are located Arenales at 2400.
In that quote, Under the pretext of training the victim in massage techniques, Barrientos forced the victim to undress and committed the first sexual assault.. On another occasion, in the same department, she was forced to have sex with her “boss” and two agents.
It was revealed during the trial sessions that there were two apartments in the same building Four other women aged between 20 and 30 were also sexually exploited from Monday to Saturday, from 10am to 6pm..
Witness C said that, in this context, for three months, she made three “passes” a day, and received only 500 pesos out of a total of 1,200 pesos a day in sexual “services.”
Witness C, accompanied by a psychiatrist from the National Program to Support Persons Victims of Trafficking Crimes of the country’s Ministry of Justice, recounted in the video conference what the sexual assault she had been subjected to was like. She explained that the accused knew that she was a minor and that she needed to work because she lived on the street.
She also explained that she did not have a key to the place where she was forced into prostitution, so to get out of there she relied on the perpetrator to open the door for her. “I was afraid he would leave me inside.“, he said at the trial.