“The Cobreloa pack”: the case of the 9 Chilean football players arrested and accused of the gang rape of a young girl

It seemed like a party like any other, with the excuse of celebrating national holidays, but it ended with a report of collective rape and the preventive arrest of nine football players who played for the club’s youth teams. Chilean Cobreloa and who now face a possible sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

“The Cobreloa Package” is the name with which some media refer to this case, in reference to a case of collective rape that occurred in Spain in 2016 and which shook public opinion in the European nation.

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In Chile, however, the controversy involves an additional element: the fact that the courts took so long to take action on the matter, since the original complaint was filed in September 2021.

Added to this is the fact that the nine At the time of the incident, the defendants were part of the youth academy of the Cobreloa football club.who currently plays in the Chilean first division.

In fact, among those arrested are two players from the first team.

WARNING: This report contains descriptions that some readers may find disturbing.

Many question the way the authorities act. (GETTY).

“They forced me to go to a room, where 8 or 10 other people came in and raped me”

According to the whistleblower’s report, the attack took place on the night of September 16, 2021, the day before the celebration of national holidays in Chile.

The young woman, then 18 years old, said that she knew one of the football players from the Cobreloa quarry and that he invited her to a party, which she attended with a friend.

The meeting took place in the so-called Casa Naranja, where the bricklayers from the city of Calama, Antofagasta region, about 1,500 kilometers north of Santiago de Chile live.

“I went with one to the bathroom and when I got to the bathroom I discovered there were two other people. There I try to leave the bathroom and they take me by the arms and take me to a room. There were more people there. I tried to run away, but no… they had more strength than me“, the complainant told the television network TV13.

“I no longer agreed, I no longer wanted to and they forced me to go to a room, where eight or 10 more people entered and raped me”, he added in statements to CHV Noticias.

To subdue her, the attackers would have resorted to other acts of violence, as stated in the complaint that the young woman made to the police the following day.

“(They) grabbed me tightly by the arms, neck and waist, hit my face, hit me with a belt, put the belt around my neck and penetrated me, I saw condoms, some were left on the floor. floor (. ..) They recorded me and made video calls to other men in which they showed what they did”, he added, according to excerpts from the text published by La Tercera.

After the attack, there would be institutional silence.

When she woke up the next day, the young woman told her friend what had happened, who took her to the hospital to do the corresponding tests and then went to the Investigative Police (PDI) to file a complaint.

Although the forensic report certified the presence of “physical signs suggestive of blatant sexual violence”the woman claims that the police officers who received her complaint recommended that she reject it and even give a statement to prove the existence of consensual sexual relations.

“They told me: ‘You had to understand it’s a sports club, they have good lawyers. the victims'”, the woman said what the agents told her.

a long silence

Official statement about the arrest of two players this morning at the Training Center. pic.twitter.com/ZCbUHbyhlQ

-Cobreloa (@Cobreloa_SADP) May 2, 2024

After this episode, the complainant stated that she wanted to abandon the case and, in fact, a police report cited by TV13 indicates that “no further investigative steps were taken, since the crime of rape was ruled out by the victim, as she indicated that he had sexual intercourse with her consent and withdrew from continuing with the complaint.”

On May 9, 2023, the case was dismissed.

But the story wasn’t over yet.

María Elena Saavedra, mother of one of the football players present at the party, although not involved in the alleged events, made public complaints in 2023, which helped to reactivate the investigation.

The woman sent communications to Cobreloa and the Professional Football Association (ANFP).

The club hired a team of external lawyers to carry out an investigation. Your conclusion? “There is no probative record of the facts contained in the complaint.”

But according to Fernando Ramírez, former president of Cobreloa, the club was informed of what happened, but did not want to investigate.

“I discovered it practically at the time. They asked me not to continue researching this topic.”, he said in statements to TV13. “On September 17th we received information that there had been a sexual assault in one of the clubhouses,” he added.

In a note published after the athletes’ arrest, the team stated that it was cooperating with justice and stated that “it was the same institution that filed a complaint and complaint against all those responsible in that case.”

“Firstly, a club that has been very resistant to admitting that there is a problem here, two weeks ago they said something else; (secondly) a type of crime that is very difficult to configure and involves a lot of silence; and thirdly, apparently a first reception that was not correct.”

In November 2023, the Sports Committee of the Chamber of Deputies held a session to hear the whistleblower’s testimony and then decided to open an investigation into what happened.

It was also at that time that the Public Prosecutor’s Office decided to reopen the investigation that led to the indictment of the 9 players who were now placed in preventive detention as they were considered a “danger to the safety of society”.

Although the formalization hearing was held behind closed doors, local media reported that police reports indicate that of the nine football players detained, eight had committed direct sexual assault against the victimwhile one of them would have recorded the events.

The process is expected to take 120 days. If found guilty, players could receive a prison sentence of up to 15 years.

Why did justice take so long to act?

What may take time to understand is something that deputy Marisela Santibáñez, one of the people who promoted the case at the Sports Commission, recently highlighted: why justice took so long when “We had a victim who did everything that society tells a woman to do when she is raped and in a massive way.?”

Asked by the Chilean press about the delay in processing the case, the Minister of Women and Gender Equality, Antonia Orellana, referred to three factors that appear to have influenced:

Orellana stated that this case is different from the Manada case in Spain because it is not a crime of collective rape.

“What the complaint talks about are multiple sexual crimes, in which, in addition, in each of them, one of the people, the aggressors, has the status of perpetrator, but then, in the rest, he has the status of accomplice. and possibly, as the investigation progresses, an accomplice,” she explained.

Source: Elcomercio