16-Year-Old Victim of Torture During Chile’s Dictatorship Awarded Compensation for Moral Damages

Original article: A los 16 años lo balearon y torturaron en Paine durante la dictadura: ahora el fisco deberá indemnizarlo

The Twenty-Second Civil Court of Santiago has ordered the State of Chile to pay a compensation of 60 million pesos for moral damages to G.E.G.A., who was a 16-year-old high school student when he was detained and shot during a police raid in rural Paine in September 1973, at the onset of the military dictatorship, and subsequently subjected to torture in a police facility.

The ruling, issued by Judge Lorena Cajas Villarroel, not only rejected the state’s claims of comprehensive repair and statute of limitations regarding the compensation action but also established that G.E.G.A. was a victim of a crime against humanity, which is imprescriptible in both criminal and civil contexts.

In her reasoning, the judge emphasized the scope and extent of the harm inflicted on the victim, stating that the compensation aims to reflect the severity and nature of the suffering endured.

“Having established both the occurrence of the harmful act and the reality that the plaintiff suffered moral damages, it is necessary to assign a monetary value to this suffering. For this purpose, the court will prudently consider the merit of the evidence presented in the proceedings, particularly the magnitude and extent of the harm, in order to determine an amount that corresponds to the severity and nature of the damage inflicted on the victim,” the ruling asserted.

The judge noted that the awarded sum as compensation “in no way alleviates the pain and suffering endured by the plaintiff due to the unlawful conduct perpetrated by agents of the State, where, deviating from their legal and moral obligations to ensure the safety of citizens, they acted in the cruelest manner against individuals like G.E.G.A.”

The court’s decision detailed the episodes of violence that marked the life of the student who was detained as a minor.

According to the ruling, the moral damage was substantiated by a psychological report indicating that the affected individual was subjected to cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.

“These events began with his detention on September 16, 1973, at the age of 16 – as substantiated by a birth certificate on file – meaning he was still a minor, a fact that will also be taken into account by this judge for the assessment of the damage, where he was shot in the scalp, then subjected to repeated beatings, electric shocks, mock executions, and degrading treatments such as forced haircuts, resulting even in the loss of his teeth due to the physical violence received. This was compounded by a second detention and torture in December 1980 by agents of the CNI,” the ruling detailed.

The court highlighted how these traumatic experiences caused a significant shift in the victim’s life trajectory, affecting his personal and social development from adolescence onward.

“The assessment and the record indicate that the experiences endured by the plaintiff resulted in a profound biographical rupture. As a high school student, he had to return to a hostile school environment under threat and social stigma, losing his support networks and friendships. This situation of post-traumatic stress became chronic over time, severely impacting his life plans, preventing him from pursuing higher education and leading to a precarious and unstable work life, marked by fear and distrust towards institutions,” the ruling stated.

Furthermore, the judgment noted that the impact extended to his intimate and family life, deteriorating his emotional bonds to the point of causing marital separation and reinforcing a sense of social isolation and marginalization that persists to this day, exacerbated by the lack of comprehensive health reparations.

The verdict concluded that the moral damage suffered by G.E.G.A. has been fully established and that its intensity and duration justify the determination of a compensation commensurate with its severity.

“Ultimately, through the aforementioned evidence, it is established that the plaintiff suffered and continues to suffer psychological and moral effects due to the experiences during Chile’s military dictatorship and the persecution he faced at the hands of the agents of the State of Chile, which inflicted psychological and physical consequences on him, whose effects have persisted despite the passage of time,” the court stated.