"Fat, greasy, you have it like a pussy." Humiliations and abuses like these are what the director and a monitor of the La Santa shelter used to refer to the minors in a camp that took place in the summer of 2008, according to the prosecution's indictment. Now, the judge has ordered the opening of the oral trial, where these events will be judged.
Magistrate María Dolores García, of the Court of Instruction Number 2 of Arrecife, thus gave course, on August 24, to the request of the Prosecutor's Office, after the events that occurred in La Santa, for which Agustín David Dios Coelho and Cristóbal Herrera Hernández are accused, as well as a 17-year-old minor, although this last file is handled by the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office.
When the judge issued this measure, on August 24, the defendants had not yet been assigned a lawyer. For this reason, she gave them "a period of three days" to appear in the case with a lawyer to defend them. From there, they had a period of ten days to present the defense briefs. Likewise, the magistrate has determined "as the competent body for the trial of this case, the criminal court of Arrecife that corresponds to it in turn."
The Arrecife Prosecutor's Office requests more than seven years in prison for the two accused of allegedly abusing six minors, between ten and twelve years old, in the second shift of the camp that took place in the summer of 2008 in the town of Tinajo. These two people are accused of six crimes against moral integrity committed with respect to as many minors.
In this sense, penalties of fifteen months in prison are requested for each of the crimes committed and compensation of 3,000 euros for each minor for the moral damages caused. In addition, the Prosecutor's Office claims that both the entity in charge of the camp "Extraocio S.L." and the Cabildo of Lanzarote are subsidiarily liable for these amounts.
With hoses
There were many humiliating episodes that these young children suffered, according to the Public Ministry, which summarizes in its indictment one of the most painful episodes that six minors had to go through: "They forced the children to leave the room at about 11:00 p.m. on an unspecified day. They made them take off their upper garments and perform multiple push-ups and sit-ups in the patio and in the open air. At the same time, they were sprayed with cold water and pressure with a hose," the text reads.
But the document goes further and focuses on the case of three minors, who suffered the alleged abuses of these two monitors. "They took away their towels, opened the curtains while they were showering, making the girls of their same age see them naked, grabbing their hands and feet so they could not cover themselves." During that same night, these officials allegedly targeted one of the minors, to whom they said "fat, greasy, you have it like a pussy." Minutes later, they forced three children "with a stopwatch in hand" to clean the toilets of the bathrooms at night.
As explained in the indictment, in 2008 the company "Extraocio S.L." signed a service provision contract with the Department of Youth and Sports of the first institution of Lanzarote. This entity promoted an activity that had as its objective the "dynamization service of the summer campaign of the La Santa shelter" for the period between July 1 and 10 of last year. "It was a camp for children between six and 12 years of age, for which the entity received an amount of 12,500 euros from the Cabildo and 125 euros for each of the children enrolled," according to the Prosecutor's Office.
A monitor with a record
According to this document, during this time, Agustín David Dios served as director and head of the camp, "living with the children and monitors and the rest of the staff in the facilities and was the person in charge of the selection and hiring of all the staff, including a 17-year-old minor against whom a file is being pursued before the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office."
Likewise, the director of these activities also hired Cristóbal Herrera, another monitor accused in this case, who had a criminal record for driving under the influence of alcohol. In addition, according to this document, "he lacked any type of qualification or title to perform the functions of monitor of minors."
For all these abuses, the prosecutor requests 90 months in prison for both defendants for six crimes against moral integrity. Although the judge has now ordered the opening of the oral trial, the hearing will still take several months to be held.