by Rod Hughes

Five years ago, this conservative Catholic country was rocked by the news that a nine-year-old girl of Nicaraguan parents living in the rural Costa Rica area of Turrialba was pregnant. Police acted rapidly, arresting Costa Rican Alexis Barquero for child abuse and statutory rape. One problem: Barquero was innocent.

Not for the first time, forensic medicine came to the assistance of justice. The girl, called “Rosita”—a rape victim’s real name cannot be released to the press—was found to have several sexually transmitted diseases. Barquero, examined under court order three times, had none. Although Rosita had named Barquero as her attacker, the prosecution’s case unraveled rapidly when she changed her story on Feb. 11, 2003, claiming she had been raped on her way home from school. Finally, last July, a criminal court in Turrialba absolved Barquero. The father of three, he had served three months’ preventive detention at La reforma Prison.

In late 2002, doctors determined that if Rosita carried the child full term, a likelihood existed that both little mother and child would die. But this raised another firestorm: The Catholic Church here strongly urged against abortion. Rosita was whisked across the border into Nicaragua where a therapeutic abortion was performed. The Church excommunicated the medical staff that performed the surgery.

Although justice had been served in Barquero’s release, Rosita’s rapist remained at large. Again, forensic medicine came to the rescue. Rosita’s mother presented a formal accusation against the girl’s stepfather last August in the police station in Masaya, 25 kilometers south of Managua, Nicaragua. The accused rapist: Francisco Fletes, Rosita’s stepfather. DNA tests on Fletes proved conclusively he was the rapist.

Prosecutor Leyla Ramirez asked for a 40 year sentence on two counts—20 years for rape in Nicaragua and 20 for rape in Costa Rica. This, the panel of judges granted, although 30 years is the maximum sentence for rape in Nicaragua.

After five years, almost to the day, the curtain fell on one of the most argued cases in the country’s history. Or so it seemed the end, until the newspaper La Nacion on Nov. 28 revealed that nine members of the Nicaraguan Women’s Network against Violence have been accused of concealing the true identity of the rapist and moving Rosita from Costa Rica before DNA tests could be performed.

The Nicaraguan Association for Human Rights are urging authorities to arrest the women who, they say, allowed an innocent Costa Rican man to be unjustly accused. “They covered up the fact that the stepfather had raped the child,” said Roberto Petrays, executive director of the human rights group.

One must take some care in forming an opinion about this accusation. Everything is politicized in Nicaragua these days as the Sandinistas attempt to control all facets of social life in the country and loosen the hold of independent groups while the opposition accuses them of trying to return to the bad old days after they took over from the Anastacio Somoza dictatorship and dominated all movements down to the neighborhood level.

Petrays admitted that “the mother also knew. Now the prosecution, through the Ministry of the Family, should continue the investigation.” It now comes out that, more recently, Rosita again became pregnant (she is now 14) and that was when Fletes was finally accused.