2024-10-18 03:01:00
After years of struggle, unease, and darkness, justice was served: tennis teacher Ariel Gallero was sentenced to eleven years in prison for sexual abuse in Río Cuarto, after the complaint filed in 2019 by Stefanía Lisa, who was his student and his victim between the ages of 13 and 18.
Judge Carlos González Castellanos confirmed the sentence and ordered the arrest of Gallero for crimes classified as “sexual abuse with carnal access, qualified by the condition of being in charge of education, to the degree of attempt, and sexual abuse with repeated carnal access, and qualified by the condition of being in charge of education. “All in real competition.”
The Second Crime Chamber of Río Cuarto, then, issued the sentence in response to the complaint that Lisa made five years ago and decided, in the midst of the ordeal that he had to go through, to make public only at the end of 2021, when he spoke with Página/12 and gave the details, with his heart in his hand, about the chilling case.
During these years Stefanía, outraged by her dream of becoming a professional tennis player and today dedicated as a kinesiology professional, she suffered all types of harassment. Now, after the torture, the pain and the adversities, At 32 years old, he can say that he achieved justice in a fight that arose beyond her case: that many other victims of abuse are encouraged to report. “Reporting is the only way to heal,” he told this medium.
The story began in 2006, when Stefi had to leave tennis due to the financial problems their parents were going through. Then it appeared Gallero to offer to train her free of charge at the Atenas club in Río Cuartowith the promise of taking advantage of her conditions and helping her fulfill her dream. “Tennis was my passion, my life, my escape from the conflicts at home. And he presented himself as my savior,” she remembered.
The details are chilling: “He plotted a macabre plan to abuse mebecause he knew I was vulnerable. It started with comments about my body, all of a sexual nature. Then, for my birthday, he kissed me. He diverted the route he was taking me to my house. and took me to a dark place; I had already changed my schedule to train at night. He told me that if I told anything my chances of playing tennis would be zero, because my only chance was him. Then the sexual abuse began, with carnal access, from Monday to Monday, every day, for two years. Without a condom, because he never took care of me at all.”
In December 2021, after a long time of silent struggle, He decided to make public everything that happened to him because, from the first moment, he considered that social condemnation was necessary for justice to advance and he will not forget the case. “There are a lot of other aggressors who are still out there as if nothing had happened, with their cases dropped. I feel that something began to change in society due to the Ni Una Menos movement and, without comparing myself in the least, for the case of Thelma (Fardin, Juan Darthés’s accuser), especially for his arrival. It is important that people know that we continue fighting and that we are no longer silent. “Society has to target the aggressor and not the victim,” Stefi said.
The memory of the case
Two months before Stefanía Lisa’s public complaint, in September 2021, Ariel Gallero was charged with sexual abuse with carnal access in aggravated attempted degree, qualified by the status of person in charge of educationall in real contest. The indictment also included death threats. Weeks later, summoned for investigation, he refused to declare: He said he didn’t know Stefanía. After the psychiatric tests that determined he was attributable, the witness statements provided by the victim and as the investigation progressed, the ruling came: eleven years in prison.
For Stefi it represents a relief among so much gloom. This is how she described what she had experienced since she was very young: “This person not only manipulated me and destroyed my self-esteem, but dismissed my entire circle so that I had no one to tell. He took me away from my family, from my friends; He managed to get me to change schools due to demands and schedules. He closed my roads and threatened to kill me and my family. He had a gun in the glove compartment of the car with the bullets in the door. “They weren’t just words.”
How did you report it?
The story, in the memory of that deep conversation with this medium, is shocking: “The first door opened when I was 16 years old, with the abuse more widespread. I saw myself with that boy in public spaces and I stopped suffering sexual abuse from this person for two months, but I did receive constant harassment. He invited me to the telo, he told me that he missed me, that he loved me; I was still in the club because I had my goal and, in my innocence, I believed that he was the only chance I had of being a tennis player. In 2009 he had a temporary partner who showed up at the club to scold me because, according to her, I was the one who invited him to the telo. I showed him the messages so he could see it was the other way around. And I told my parents what had happened with this girl.; “I didn’t say anything about everything that was happening with him.”
And she went deeper: “I went to report, accompanied by my father, and I asked the police officer to go in alone to tell him everything; I wanted to report him. I told him everything and the policeman told me that if I reported him, maybe he would come and shoot me in the forehead.and that I was going to waste his time with a complaint because in two months I would return to him. Surely I said he was my boyfriend, because he had made me believe that, but The police never understood that it was abuse and that I was a minor. In the end I did not file a complaint. My parents asked me and I told them that he was my boyfriend, that we had a relationship, because that’s what he made me say. “I asked my parents to let me continue with tennis because it was my passion.”
The story remained “hidden” until the strength of Thelma and the entire group that promoted her appeared. The way there, in those words of Stefi, a survivor among many who suffer abuse in every part of the country and the world: “In 2010 another couple who lived with him He told me that there was a girl with whom he had sexual relationswho was also a minor, which I already suspected. Then I was able to tell my parents a little: I told them that I had had an abusive relationship but not that it had been forced. They found out after many details. Then I implored my mother not to make me report it.to let me continue with my life. That’s why I didn’t report it. But the harassment and threats continued. And Thelma happened, which moved me a lot.”
Despite his fear, he decided to report it. It was in December 2019, with a first approach in the Undersecretary of Gender. Days later he made a criminal complaint in Unit Number 1 of Río Cuarto. There they elevated the case to the prosecutor’s office. The times of the pandemic did not prevent the cause from taking its course. The path, the fight, the resistance, the survival, bore their first great fruit: the expected sentence.
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