Higui was acquitted (but) Was there justice in the resolution of her case?

An Argentine court last week acquitted Eva Analía Higui de Jesús, a lesbian woman who in 2016 suffered an attempted gang rape by three men and who, defending herself against them, killed one of the men.

The attack occurred in 2016, and since then LGTBIQ activists have mobilized to publicize her story as a case of lesbophobia, because the attackers, who already knew her (and it was not the first time they had harassed her), warned her that they were going «to make her feel like a woman”.

In these five and a half years, the campaign for her acquittal was launched with a slogan repeated on banners, walls, t-shirts and social networks: «I would also defend myself like Higui», reports RT.

The trial began on Tuesday and was to end next week, but last night, surprisingly, judges Gustavo Varvello, German Saint Martin and Julián Descalzo of the Oral Criminal Court Number 7 of San Martín issued their ruling and acquitted Higui in a process in which the prosecution had requested her immediate arrest and a prison sentence of 10 years

In between shouts of joy and applause, tears broke out at the court doors. And the smile of Higui, who with the restorative sense of justice on her forehead, thanked the support she has received from the organizations.

«I appreciate the strength, the affection, the wisdom, the protection, the respect that only you gave me, thanks for the defense, thanks for not lowering your arms», she said in the middle of a collective celebration in which she also remembered Tehuel, a young trans man who has been missing since March 11 of last year, when he went out on a work appointment and never came back.

Converted into an activist herself, she warned that the fight would continue.

“We are going to keep fighting. We are going to get the girls, the trans girls, the gay boys out of jail. They need us. Where is Tehuel? Justice for all, for the kids in the neighborhood, for those who have been victims of  ‘easy triggers’ «, said Higui.

A triumph for Higui

Chiqui Conder, Higui’s lawyer, warned that the acquittal is a victory for activism, not for the patriarchal judicial system.

“They have to believe us when we report abuse. Nothing was investigated here about what they did to Higui. The only thing that the prosecutors saw is how to criminalize Higui for being a woman, black, poor and a lesbian. The first thing the State does with Higui, who has suffered multiple forms of violence, is to lock her up and imprison her. That speaks of an absent State», she explained in an interview with the Agencia Presentes.

The case began on October 16, 2016, when Higui, a soccer player on the fields of her neighborhood since childhood and prominent in the position of goalkeeper, was walking through the neighborhood of San Miguel, located in the province of Buenos Aires, and began to be harassed by three men.

Higui was then 42 years old. The men surrounded her and one of them said «I’m going to make you feel like a woman, you ‘macho’ lesbian». They knew her sexual orientation and it was not the first time they attacked her for it.

Between all of them, they threw her onto the ground. They tore off her clothes. They warned her that they were going to rape her. She managed to pull out a knife to defend herself against the gang rape. She plunged it into one of her aggressors, Cristian Rubén Espósito, who died. The others escaped.

When the police arrived, Higui was still lying, unconscious, beaten, with her clothes in tatters. She was arrested and she was charged with simple murder.

Her lesbophobic attack and attempted rape were never investigated, but Higui did have to spend eight months in prison for the death of her aggressor.

Thanks to the organizations that mobilized, she managed to be released in June 2017. But she continued to be prosecuted until this Thursday, in which they finally issued the acquittal for which she fought so hard.