When it has been a week since it became public that the Undersecretary of the Interior Manuel Monsalveresigned on Thursday, was accused of rape by an advisor who was under his command, the Government of President Gabriel Boric has begun to take action. He has done so after a series of controversies, among them, that the resignation took place two days after the president and the Minister of the Interior, Carolina Tohá, learned that there was a complaint against him and, despite that, he He continued in his work. If on the morning of this Thursday Boric sent a message of support to the victims of sexual crimes in Chile – in an obvious allusion to the case that hits La Moneda – by pointing out that “our duty is to believe him, I believe him”, for the Later, the Executive announced that it had instructed the State Defense Council (CDE) to evaluate whether, as a public official, Monsalve could have engaged in “potential improper exercise of functions” and committed possible crimes.
The request to the CDE was made by Minister Tohá, the portfolio to which Monsalve belonged. It is a request that occurs 24 hours after prosecutor Xavier Armendáriz, who investigates the rape complaintrevealed during a court hearing a series of actions that the 59-year-old doctor, suspended from the Socialist Party, carried out days before the official filed the complaint on October 14. Among them, he asked a detective from the Investigative Police (PDI), an institution that was then under his command as a civil authority, to public safety chargeapproach “the victim’s inner circle.”
Monsalve faces an accusation for events that occurred between the night of Sunday, September 22, and the early hours of Monday, September 23. According to the complaint, he had dinner with his 32-year-old advisor at a Peruvian food restaurant in the center of Santiago, where they drank alcohol. After this, the complainant has indicated that she woke up the next morning, without remembering anything, in the Panamericano hotel – located a few blocks from La Moneda – where the then Undersecretary of the Interior resided.
Armendáriz pointed out that, as the Prosecutor’s Office, “we know that there have been previous efforts without any complaint or any official communication to higher authorities by the accused. He ordered proceedings to be carried out with secrecy that They not only assisted in these camera interventionsbut, in addition, they reached the victim’s inner circle.” “And the first detective who spoke with the victim was a person within the course of these proceedings ordered, requested, suggested, and I am not going to use any more verbs because I still do not know exactly how to frame that activity, until we have complete facts from of the accused. “They approached his apartment,” he added.
For a week, the Public Ministry has been investigating the actions that Monsalve took, when he was still in office, by asking PDI intelligence officials to review the security cameras in the hotel where he allegedly committed the attack. Armendáriz revealed on Wednesday that it was through the statement of a PDI official that he learned that he [Monsalve] “He asked them to approach the victim. So if he does this, we don’t know if it’s going to happen again. “It is an investigation that is ongoing, which is just beginning.”
Boric: “I believe him”
Since Monsalve’s case became publicly known on Thursday the 17th, when the newspaper The Second revealed that the Prosecutor’s Office was investigating him for a serious sexual crime, and then the undersecretary presented his resignation, the Government has tried to explain why if both Minister Tohá and President Boric were aware of the complaint since Tuesday the 15th, the undersecretary continued fulfilling their duties until two days later. The official was even allowed to travel to the Biobío region to talk with his family and, hours before his resignation, he participated in his capacity as an authority in a budget commission in the Senate.
Over the days, Monsalve’s situation has become increasingly complex, especially after the story given by prosecutor Armendáriz, who, when putting into context the efforts he made as undersecretary prior to the complaint being filed, said: “Between the accused and the victim there is an asymmetric relationship. One is the boss of the other. But, furthermore, he is not just any boss. He is a public figure. He is a figure that has weight in the social sphere. It has power, it has influence, it has reach. “He’s not just any boss.” And he added: “On the one hand, we have a person of weight, in a crime, in a context of the sphere of sexuality, of a person who is subordinate to him, and who carries out actions that could, could mean loss of evidence ”.
This Thursday, Boric has referred for the second time to Monsalve caseafter the controversial 53 minute press conference on Friday the 18th, and has sent a message to those reporting sexual crimes. “Our duty is to believe him, I believe him, and it is the duty of justice, without any pressure, to impartially determine the guilt or not of the accused,” he said in an activity on the Law of Compliance with Tax Obligations in San Joaquín, a municipality south of the Metropolitan Region.
Boric, who avoided mentioning names, stressed that “when a woman reports something as serious as a rape, it is unimaginable what must have happened to make the decision to report even more against someone who has more power.” He also recognized that “no one is exempt from someone committing crimes, betraying trust, flouting the law or rights. The question is how we react to that, and we have to react firmly, without privileges, without corporate defenses.”
Luis Corderonew Undersecretary of the Interior, has said that Boric’s position, of believing the complainants of sexual abuse, is not only a personal opinion, but also an institutional one. And within the opposition, although they have valued this Thursday’s statements, they consider them late, like the mayor of Providencia and presidential letter of the traditional right, Evelyn Matthei, who has said that “better late than never, but pucha “what a late afternoon.”