The Chamber of Cassation of the Entre Ríos city of Concordia resolved today to uphold the claim of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and revoked the house arrest that the lawyer Gustavo Rivas, “illustrious citizen” of Gualeguaychú, was serving, convicted in 2019 and in 2022 for abusing minors, Judicial sources informed Télam.
The Court annulled the house arrest that allowed him the ruling that sentenced him to 23 years in prison and that he was serving in his home located on Calle Miter y Urquiza, a few meters from the main square, from where this followingnoon he was transferred to Penal Unit 9 “The Paddock”.
The prosecutor in charge of the case, Lisandro Beherán, told Télam that “it took a lot of effort to reach this outcome, but they never gave up or gave anything up for lost,” and thanked his partner Martina Cedrés, who also worked in the case.
In addition, he asked that the ruling “be seen as true justice, both by the community and by the victims,” and hoped that it would serve “so that the abuses are not repeated.”
Rivas, condemned
In May 2019, the lawyer was sentenced to only 8 years in prison for “promoting corruption and prostitution” of a minor, but acquitted in nine other complaints of which the Superior Court of Justice of Entre Ríos (Stjer) ordered to review seven.
The Stjer understood that crimes once morest the sexual integrity of minors did not prescribe, since they should be considered crimes once morest human rights.
For this reason, in September 2022, the judges of Entre Ríos Ignacio Telenta, Gervasio Labriola and Elvio Garzón formed a new court to establish a new sentence and sentenced Rivas to 23 years in effective prison for eight crimes of sexual abuse of minors.
Likewise, in December of that year, the Court of Trial and Appeals of Gualeguaychú, Court for the Execution of Sentences and Security Measures, established that Rivas, 77, serve his prison term at his home.
This morning the Concordia Court of Cassation reviewed the case and gave rise to the request of the prosecutor in the case, Lisandro Beherán, and ordered “the immediate transfer from his home to Penal Unit 9 “Granja Penal El Potrero”, where he will remain housed.” .
He also ordered to provide him with the “necessary safety and health conditions such as psychological and psychiatric treatments, medical attention and clinical examinations.”
Depraved and with minors
During the 2019 trial, which lasted regarding a month and had more than 100 witnesses, the Court considered that the facts “existed and Rivas was their author”, turning “those children into their fetishes and objects of pleasure to achieve their own sexual satisfaction”.
According to the judges, the abuses “occurred inside the Rivas homes, mainly on Friday and Saturday nights, throughout the years and up to 2011,” and “all the victims were under 18 years of age. ”.
In 2021, the judge of Concordia, María Evangelina Bruzzo, analyzed the trial hearings and the evidence presented and stressed that it was a case of “serious attacks on human rights.”
“Rivas abused an indeterminate number of minors, and throughout several decades in an uninterrupted and systematic way” attacking “the dignity of vulnerable children, some extremely”, taking advantage of “their prestige and reputation to attract them, exercise over them and using their emotional immaturity,” he added.
The complaint once morest Rivas originated from a publication in the Entre Ríos magazine Análisis Digital, which revealed that the lawyer took children and adolescents to his home, where he subjected them to different abuses between 1970 and 2010.
During those years, Rivas was a councilor, candidate for governor and national deputy for a sector of liberal and conservative forces, he always showed himself as a cultural and historical reference, wrote books on the history of the city and was known as a “cultural and of the carnivals” of Gualeguaychú.
At that time, he took advantage of his reputation to enter areas where there were minors or places directly integrated by them, such as student commissions, school cooperatives, soccer, basketball and swimming leagues.