The district attorney for the Buenos Aires district of Berazategui, Daniel Ichazo, today investigated Marcelo “Teto” Medina, and the others involveds in the open case for alleged labor exploitation and reduction to servitude in the therapeutic community “La Razón de Vivir”while its director, Néstor Zelaya, refused to testify y will remain detained like the rest of those investigatedas confirmed by his defense attorney Marcelo Biondi.
The exhumorist and host of the program VideoMatch, Marcelo José Medina, was arrested yesterday at his home in Palermo, accused of being the visible face of the organization The reason to liveto stoprecruit people con motivational speeches in social networks and in various parts of the country, which then supposedly they were reduced to servitude in subhuman conditions.
The detainees were transferred at 7:30 today to the Prosecutor’s Office for Crimes Related to Trafficking in Persons, Child Pornography and Grooming dependent on the Quilmes Courts, where they remained until around 6:00 p.m. and were transferred once more to the First Berazategui Police Station.
The defenders of the detainees complained that they were not allowed “to see the file” and even left the place following saying that they would speak with the Attorney General of the province “to let him know what is happening.”
Medina and 16 other people were arrested yesterday in a series of raids in CABA, Greater Buenos Aires and Córdoba.
“Just finished testify for two hours, answered all the prosecutor’s questions, I submitted the request for release and now we have to wait 5 days for the Judge of Guarantees to resolve his procedural situation,” said one of Medina’s defense attorneys, Adrián Tenca.
“He was absolutely clear, he went only once a week, he worked from eleven in the morning to five in the followingnoon, I played a role of giving talks to the boys and it has absolutely nothing to do with the role of this organization,” added Tenca.
Later, he said that Medina “charged ten thousand pesos per talk, which was transferred to his CBU,” and that what his client did in this foundation he did in fifteen others. “Through social networks, many people asked him for help and others, so he, depending on the place where these people lived, referred them to different communities,” he explained. “Medina was an employee of each of the institutions with which he worked,” Tenca concluded.
Also the lawyer of Néstor Zelaya, who refused to testify before the prosecutor, said that the imputation of labor exploitation to young people with problematic consumption “is absolutely preposterous”.
Biondi anticipated the possibility that Zelaya will declare “next week”, once he studies the defense strategy.
“What I can assure you is that the people who have communicated with me since yesterday that I took up the defense, which are more than 80 or 90, refer to the opposite of what has been made known since the investigation in the form of that there was no type of action that made them work in a forced state or in deplorable conditions,” he said.
About the origin of the complaintthe lawyer noted that “It has to do with a priest who was part of this farm, who later left.”
And he detailed: “At the time he was part of it, he never saw any allegedly criminal act. It is strange that following he left and opened his own farm for the same purposes, he began to denounce different facts“.
Meanwhile, heto the mother of a young man who was hospitalizedor in a property of La Razón de Vivir, complainant in the open case once morest that therapeutic community, assured today that there are families who defend the place “because they have nowhere to leave the children”assured that “It is a lie that they had 14 professionals” in service and maintained that the young people “had no food, water to bathe, or medical assistance”.
“Families don’t know where to take their kids, that’s understandable. But they also have to realize that kids don’t have to live in the situation they live in. They are boys who are sick and need a decent life“, the woman, who introduced herself as Marcela, told radio Con Vos, but whose name was changed to protect her identity.
The center “is all a lie,” said the woman, who ironically nominated her on several occasions as “the reason for dying.” “They said they had 14 professionals and it was all a lie. Everyone put on titles, the director said he was an accountant and it was a lie,” she added, referring to Zelaya. Regarding the situation in which the young people lived there, the complainant stated that “they had no food, they had no water to bathe, they had no medical assistance, they had no psychological assistance.”
Asked if she saw any progress in her son throughout the hospitalization, she replied: “Zero, nothing.” “In one year she saw the psychologist twice. She was a psychologist at the time,” she noted.
Regarding the method of payment, he explained: “They made me deposit money at a kiosk that Rubén Durán was in charge of. It turns out that I deposited, deposited and never reached it. My son did not even have soap to bathe in.”
About the priest “Quique”, who was named relatives of people interned in the place, he maintained that “he is a good person” and that “many children did not die thanks to him.”
As a corollary, He asked the authorities “to please take action on the matter. I understand the families. Do not believe everything that the directors tell you, that is why there are 17 detainees. May justice really be done.”
In his turn, one of the rehabilitated youths who temporarily took charge of the therapeutic community following yesterday’s arrests of those responsible for the center assured this morning that “the boys are calm, carrying out their activities accordingly”, and pointed out that “it has already passed worst”.
“The worst thing was experiencing the raid, having patrolmen inside as if the boys had committed a crime,” the young man, named Catriel, told Télam, stressing that “today the situation is normal” at the Florencio Varela community headquarters, in the south of the Buenos Aires conurbation.
Catriel, who along with five other rehabilitated youths decided to take charge of that center, said that “the boys just woke up; we are all rehabilitated boys united and we are going to try to move it forward.”
“My reason for being here today is to fight for the recovery of my teammates,” he added.
