Former Peruvian soldiers sentenced to prison for raping teenage girls during country's armed conflict

Lima, Peru — Ten men were convicted Wednesday in Peru of raping nine teenage girls while serving in the army during the armed conflict that ravaged the country decades ago.

Judge Marco Angulo, of Peru's First Superior Criminal Court, ordered the former soldiers to serve prison time, with sentences ranging from six to 12 years. Authorities accused them of raping teenage girls between 1984 and 1994 in the Andean community of Manta.

Angulo said the lack of constitutional guarantees in the community during the armed conflict “transformed the possibility of reporting sexual abuse into marginal acts and without any attention.” He added that the victims lived in a context of social rejection which forced them “to carry out their demands for their violated rights in the most absolute helplessness”.

“The decision adopted is a message that … aims to respect the fundamental rights of people, even in the most serious social crises facing the nation,” Angulo said.

After the sentences were announced, prosecutors, who asked for harsher sentences, and lawyers for the victims said they would evaluate Angulo's decision to decide whether to challenge it.

The war that raged between the Peruvian army and the communist Shining Path insurgency from 1980 to 2000 left around 70,000 people dead, the majority in rural areas.

Prosecutors began investigating the teenagers' accusations in 2004 after a special commission investigating the armed conflict issued a report detailing, among other abuses suffered by Manta civilians, that “sexual violence was a persistent practice and daily” for which “the members of the army were stationed”. in local military bases were the main culprits.”

Angulo said Wednesday that the rapes sometimes occurred when teenagers entered their homes after being threatened with guns, or after being arrested and charged without proof of their membership in the Shining Path. One victim reported having a scar on her hip left by a soldier who used a knife to cut her underwear.