Lucio Dupuy, 5, arrived at the end of 2021 at a police station in the Argentine city of Santa Rosa accompanied by a neighbor. He had received a beating and the Police immediately transferred him to a local hospital. But it was already too late and the child died moments later. Son of separated parents, Lucio Dupuy was that December day with her mother and her girlfriend.
In the days following the death of the child, a crime that has shocked the entire country, the version of the mother and her partner was that both had suffered a robbery at their home, although a later autopsy revealed that this was not true and that the case was rather more serious. The two women were accused of murdering the little boy on charges of “homicide and grossly outrageous sexual abuse.” Both crimes are punishable by life imprisonment.
In the final argument of the trial, which concluded last December after 18 hearings, Magdalena Espósito Valenti, mother of the child, and her partner, Abigail Páez, spoke their last words about the dramatic event. Lucio’s mother justified his lack of tears: “Many will find it bad that I am not crying, but I mentalized myself to be as strong as possible to be able to speak clearly. I mourn Lucio in private, he seems more human to me ».
For her part, María Silvina Blanco Gómez, defender of Páez, considered that there was not a murder, but that it was a homicide and stated that, in her opinion, there was no fraud, there was no intent to kill him. In addition, the defender said that the boy’s mother had admitted to hitting him, but without wanting to cause her death.
obvious damage
It was the forensic doctor Juan Carlos Toulouse who was in charge of unraveling what happened. The same professional was strongly moved and impressed by his macabre findings. In statements to the local TV channel Telefé, the doctor even said: “I have been a coroner for 27 years and five years in La Plata. I have seen babies and traumatisms, but I have never seen this like this ».
Regarding the autopsy, which determined that Lucio died from internal bleeding Caused by a repeated series of assaults and bruises, Toulouse assured that this level of blows and cruelty “had never seen it before.” “The injuries were obvious, I think someone who had seen him walking or on the street and could tell.”
The mother Lucio Depuy and his girlfriend, with the minor
Lucio Dupuy had gone at least five times –in just three months– to different health centers in his province having suffered various traumas. However, there were no complaints from health professionals or from the educational institution he attended.
Argentina has been on edge until last Thursday, a day that the country will remember in the near future, having put an end to the story of one of the cruelest crimes that has occurred in recent years in the country of tango. At noon, the Justice announced the most terrible and long-awaited verdict: the mother of little Lucio Dupuy, Magdalena Espósito Valenti, and her partner, Abigail Páez, were found guilty of the murder of the five-year-old boy. According to the ruling of the Justice of the city of Santa Rosa – where the crime took place – both were guilty of homicide, aggravated in the case of Páez, by treachery and cruelty.
It was the verdict expected by the family, and the ruling was celebrated outside the court, where a sense of justice reigned. Except for one thing: the Prosecutor’s Office had also accused the mother of sexual abuse and the judges ruled thatit was done only by your partnerwithout the participation of his mother. The penalty that corresponds to them is life imprisonment, although confirmation of whether or not this penalty will be applied will be known in a future hearing.
Similar cases
The reading of the sentence was carried out by Judge Ongaro, president of the Court, and lasted for just over five minutes. Both Valenti and her partner were accused of murder and also accused of having committed torture, mistreatment, violence and even sexual abuse against the minor – of which the judges found the mother’s partner guilty, but not the child’s parent.
The two women decided not to be present in the courtroom when the sentence was announced. Nor was his defense, something that caught the attention of the attendees. The couple preferred to follow the reading of the ruling from the prison where they are, in the province of San Luis.
In the room were the family of the father of the murdered child, as well as the relatives of other minors with stories similar to Lucio’s. The lawyer for the child’s father’s family, José Aguerrido, was also there, who, after hearing the verdict, said: “Lucio can rest in peace.” The lawyer told the local press: “We are relatively satisfied, we want to see the fundamentals. We were surprised the acquittal of the mother regarding the crime of sexual abuse. I want to read it well and we will analyze if we appeal it«. The minor’s grandfather, wrapped in tears, left the room minutes before the ruling was announced. Lucio’s father, Christian Dupuy, had been asking for justice for more than a year.
a father’s lament
Just three weeks before the court ruling was announced, the boy’s father remembered his son on social media. There he assured that his family “will never be able to forget it.”
Christian Dupuy had been requesting custody of the minor since August 2020. The mother and her partner had not allowed him to see the child since the beginning of the pandemic. For this reason, different associations in Argentina –among them, the Más Vida Foundation– request the disqualification of Judge Ana Clara Pérez Ballester, who granted custody of the minor to her mother.
The minor’s father had expressed his heartbreaking grief in a message on social networks: “I miss you. I’ve tried and it’s useless, I’ve been trying to let go of you for a while, but it’s totally useless trying to forget something that is and has always been so deep inside of me. It is impossible to forget the feeling of when you came into the world and you were delivered to me wrapped in blankets, impossible to forget how heartbreaking and painful (it was). see you in a drawer, when the law of life says that a son must bury his father, and not as it happened«. At the end of his text, Dupuy concluded: »I want life to go by quickly, enjoying everything I have to see you again. I miss you”.
The cause of an entire country
The entire country, especially Santa Rosa, the capital of La Pampa – to the west of Buenos Aires, where the macabre event took place – has shuddered as the details of this macabre crime have become known over time. The child has suffered in his very short life much more than is possible to imagine. Once again, the germ of horror arose within the family itself of the minor In fact, the residents of the province installed a giant mural with the image of Lucio and the phrase: “You should be here where I love you, and not there where I miss you.” Lucio’s death became the cause of an entire town. This Thursday morning, in La Pampa, the area around the court woke up full of images of the child and even stamps with the child’s photo were distributed.
The scope of this case in Argentine territory has been such that it could even lead to the arrival of a new law. In fact, President Alberto Fernández has incorporated the so-called ‘law Lucius’ to extraordinary sessions of Congress. Said regulation, which seeks to detect and prevent violence against children, will promote national communication campaigns to raise awareness about situations of abuse, will train state agents to prevent violence against children and will protect the identity of teachers, doctors and agents , who will be obliged to report these crimes.
www.abc.es
George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism