Human trafficking; Just five sentences in ten years
Diario Libre
SD. Between 2006 and 2013 there has not been one conviction for human trafficking. Ten years after law 137-03 on Illicit Trafficking of Immigrants and Human Trafficking went into effect, there have been just five sentences given to traffickers who dealt in the white slave traffic for the sexual exploitation of women. Of this number, two were achieved in 2013 after a period of seven years, while this issue appeared to be forgotten by the Justice Department.
"The first sentence that we achieved this year came about in April, with a sentence for 10 years in jail for two defendants implicated in human trafficking. The second conviction came in May, when the sentence handed down was for 15 years for a woman accused of human trafficking and fraud," according to Jonathan Baro, the director of the Specialized Prosecutor's Office Against Human Trafficking and Immigration.
According to statistical information supplied by this department of the Justice Department, as a result of the creation of Law 137-03, in 2004 there was a case in the Jurisdiction of Santiago, and the first conviction for this crime. On that occasion the defendant received a five year prison sentence for having violated articles 3 and 4, paragraphs1,2,5,6and 7 of the statute.
In 2005 and 2006 in Santo Domingo, there were seven persons who received 15 year sentences in two cases of sexual exploitation. Nevertheless, from 2006 until 2013 there were seven years without a single sentence for this crime, in spite of the proliferation of the cases of human trafficking.
A glance at some of the results of investigations carried out between 2003 and 2010, on cases of Dominican women that were trafficked overseas stresses the fact that among the diverse expressions of human trafficking, sexual exploitation was the principle activity to which the victims were subjected.
The jurist of the Center of Guidance and Integrated Research (COIN), Liliana Pavon, recalls that in 2008 there was a case heard in the courts, which after favoring the victims in the first instance, under appeal the defendant was favored.
This was a case of two Dominican women that were taken to Argentina with an offer of work taking care of the elderly and cleaning houses; upon arriving they were taken to a house of prostitution from where they escaped and filed a complaint with the Police of that country.
"The case won a sentence in the First Instance of a million peso and ten years in jail, and we were happy with the sentence. Nonetheless, on appeal, the judge reviewed the case file and said that there was no material evidence that was documented correctly for the case," said Pavon.
"What should the case have had? A statement by the persons that served as witnesses, a judicial investigation of six months with photographs and videos in the place in Argentina, something that said "Look this is the investigative case file?" But we only had the testimony of the women saying that they were trafficked and of the trafficker saying that he was only helping them," she added to her tale.
A situation that explains what usually happens in the cases of victims of trafficking.
"When you have a case of a person that was murdered, you have the body or a weapon that you find. In the cases of human trafficking, the woman is still alive and you have neither body or weapon, you have a story of a woman that told how she migrated to another country, who does not even know where she was, has not fixed address of the place, or of the process of obtaining the visa that was done by the trafficker...he has the ticket receipts, he knows the agency where they were bought, which is to day he has the documentation, the victim has nothing," explained Pavon.
It is because of this that she said that in the majority of the cases of human trafficking it is hard to obtain justice, the cases are set aside and very rarely end in favor of the women affected.
In order to get an idea of the amount of cases of trafficking that have been filed away over the last decade, the Diario Libre requested from the Justice Department the information through the proper channels, but the information never arrived.
Extension of the cases
According to the psychologist from COIN, Maria Esther Carbuccia, the majority of the victims of trafficking that she receives in her office do not take the cases to court because of fear and because of the tiresome process.
"What the girls generally express is that they are giving up hope because of the many times they have to go to a hearing...it is very tiresome, because the cases are postponed, the judges do not find the evidence sufficient, they always ask for more. It is because of this that when they go to trial what they do is conciliation and for three cents or because they pardon the debt that they had with the trafficker, they leave everything," Carbuccia explained.
Number of cases criticized
Experts on the issue feel that talking about five convictions in ten years shows the inefficiency of the Law and the weaknesses of the Dominican justice system.
"This means that all of the effort that has been made to prosecute has not been sufficient, and this is shown in the data, which is to say, the number of convictions continues to be insufficient," stressed the executive vice-president of the Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (FINJUS), Servio Tulio Castaños Guzman.
This year, the Specialized Prosecutor Against Illicit Trafficking of Immigrants and Human Trafficking, managed to identify 52 cases of Human Trafficking of which 25 were taken to court and 27 are still under investigation.
"They are doing a good job, nevertheless, when they arrest a person and when he arrived at the courts, the Judge sees the case and the Penal Process Code that allows certain flexibility that normally cause the case to be lost," said Pavon.
In this sense, she said that the country needs judges that understand the seriousness of the cases of trafficking and that they give them a different handling to the issue.
"We need for the justice system to understand that Human Trafficking is as serious as the rape of a young girl, which is to say that preventive custody is the minimum requirement that we want in these cases, that they do not turn their backs on the victim, because in the system is where the biggest breakdown is located," she said.
Revision of the Law and of the Civil Process Code
The executive vice-president of Finjus said that the Justice Department should carry out a revision of the Law 137-03 and evaluate the fines applied to the clients of the prostitutes. "I believe that after ten years it is worthwhile to see if it is possible to modify the law, because a law is a working hypothesis and as it is being implemented you can see what its strengths and weaknesses are, I believe that it is time to perfect it," he noted.
For her part, Liliana Pavon pointed out that "besides improving some points of the law," the principle challenge of the judicial authorities is to perfect the Civil Process Code.
"The first sentence that we achieved this year came about in April, with a sentence for 10 years in jail for two defendants implicated in human trafficking. The second conviction came in May, when the sentence handed down was for 15 years for a woman accused of human trafficking and fraud," according to Jonathan Baro, the director of the Specialized Prosecutor's Office Against Human Trafficking and Immigration.
According to statistical information supplied by this department of the Justice Department, as a result of the creation of Law 137-03, in 2004 there was a case in the Jurisdiction of Santiago, and the first conviction for this crime. On that occasion the defendant received a five year prison sentence for having violated articles 3 and 4, paragraphs1,2,5,6and 7 of the statute.
In 2005 and 2006 in Santo Domingo, there were seven persons who received 15 year sentences in two cases of sexual exploitation. Nevertheless, from 2006 until 2013 there were seven years without a single sentence for this crime, in spite of the proliferation of the cases of human trafficking.
A glance at some of the results of investigations carried out between 2003 and 2010, on cases of Dominican women that were trafficked overseas stresses the fact that among the diverse expressions of human trafficking, sexual exploitation was the principle activity to which the victims were subjected.
The jurist of the Center of Guidance and Integrated Research (COIN), Liliana Pavon, recalls that in 2008 there was a case heard in the courts, which after favoring the victims in the first instance, under appeal the defendant was favored.
This was a case of two Dominican women that were taken to Argentina with an offer of work taking care of the elderly and cleaning houses; upon arriving they were taken to a house of prostitution from where they escaped and filed a complaint with the Police of that country.
"The case won a sentence in the First Instance of a million peso and ten years in jail, and we were happy with the sentence. Nonetheless, on appeal, the judge reviewed the case file and said that there was no material evidence that was documented correctly for the case," said Pavon.
"What should the case have had? A statement by the persons that served as witnesses, a judicial investigation of six months with photographs and videos in the place in Argentina, something that said "Look this is the investigative case file?" But we only had the testimony of the women saying that they were trafficked and of the trafficker saying that he was only helping them," she added to her tale.
A situation that explains what usually happens in the cases of victims of trafficking.
"When you have a case of a person that was murdered, you have the body or a weapon that you find. In the cases of human trafficking, the woman is still alive and you have neither body or weapon, you have a story of a woman that told how she migrated to another country, who does not even know where she was, has not fixed address of the place, or of the process of obtaining the visa that was done by the trafficker...he has the ticket receipts, he knows the agency where they were bought, which is to day he has the documentation, the victim has nothing," explained Pavon.
It is because of this that she said that in the majority of the cases of human trafficking it is hard to obtain justice, the cases are set aside and very rarely end in favor of the women affected.
In order to get an idea of the amount of cases of trafficking that have been filed away over the last decade, the Diario Libre requested from the Justice Department the information through the proper channels, but the information never arrived.
Extension of the cases
According to the psychologist from COIN, Maria Esther Carbuccia, the majority of the victims of trafficking that she receives in her office do not take the cases to court because of fear and because of the tiresome process.
"What the girls generally express is that they are giving up hope because of the many times they have to go to a hearing...it is very tiresome, because the cases are postponed, the judges do not find the evidence sufficient, they always ask for more. It is because of this that when they go to trial what they do is conciliation and for three cents or because they pardon the debt that they had with the trafficker, they leave everything," Carbuccia explained.
Number of cases criticized
Experts on the issue feel that talking about five convictions in ten years shows the inefficiency of the Law and the weaknesses of the Dominican justice system.
"This means that all of the effort that has been made to prosecute has not been sufficient, and this is shown in the data, which is to say, the number of convictions continues to be insufficient," stressed the executive vice-president of the Institutionalism and Justice Foundation (FINJUS), Servio Tulio Castaños Guzman.
This year, the Specialized Prosecutor Against Illicit Trafficking of Immigrants and Human Trafficking, managed to identify 52 cases of Human Trafficking of which 25 were taken to court and 27 are still under investigation.
"They are doing a good job, nevertheless, when they arrest a person and when he arrived at the courts, the Judge sees the case and the Penal Process Code that allows certain flexibility that normally cause the case to be lost," said Pavon.
In this sense, she said that the country needs judges that understand the seriousness of the cases of trafficking and that they give them a different handling to the issue.
"We need for the justice system to understand that Human Trafficking is as serious as the rape of a young girl, which is to say that preventive custody is the minimum requirement that we want in these cases, that they do not turn their backs on the victim, because in the system is where the biggest breakdown is located," she said.
Revision of the Law and of the Civil Process Code
The executive vice-president of Finjus said that the Justice Department should carry out a revision of the Law 137-03 and evaluate the fines applied to the clients of the prostitutes. "I believe that after ten years it is worthwhile to see if it is possible to modify the law, because a law is a working hypothesis and as it is being implemented you can see what its strengths and weaknesses are, I believe that it is time to perfect it," he noted.
For her part, Liliana Pavon pointed out that "besides improving some points of the law," the principle challenge of the judicial authorities is to perfect the Civil Process Code.
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