In our country, paradoxes are an everyday occurrence. The week in which the abuse of the legal concept of political violence based on gender by women involved in politics is discussed, the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation takes a huge step by siding with Sasha Sokol in her lawsuit against her abuser, Mr. Luis de Llano, with whom she had a relationship when she was 14 and he was 39. The Court made it clear that in cases of sexual abuse of minors, there is no statute of limitations for the crime due to the lasting impact it has on the victim’s life.
This decision may be one of the last significant ones from this Court as we have known it. Their decision is unappealable and sets a high standard for what comes next, configured in a sadly painful election. Furthermore, a couple of weeks ago, the outgoing Court – with a project by Alfredo Gutiérrez Ortiz Mena – decided to release a woman who was falsely accused and imprisoned for almost twenty years in the so-called Wallace case, a matter as sinister as the very woman who bore that surname. Thus, the departing Court leaves a high standard. It is not a coincidence that these are significant cases for women.
The importance of the decision in Sasha’s case goes beyond a victory. It is exemplary in many ways. Because of the bravery of the victim who, regardless of the years passed, the public relevance of herself and her abuser, and her artistic career, decided to reveal decades of pain—the terrible consequences of having been a child in the presence of a degenerate adult who never knew boundaries until now, at nearly 80 years old. It must not have been easy for her to face the consequences of an abusive relationship from any angle you choose to see it. The fragility of adolescence would never leave her due to the scars left by having her innocence trampled in that way. The repeated mockery by the abuser, who found it amusing to celebrate his adult perversions with a minor, was what led that little girl to react and seek justice. Years passed, but justice arrived.
Sasha’s success in the judicial arena should motivate victims who have suffered something similar (the fact that both are public figures also serves as an incentive in this regard). Certainly, being a woman requires double the effort, and being a victim multiplies that. Hence the value of Sokol’s actions, because it takes courage to publicly disclose an abusive situation and perseverance to remain resolute, enduring insults, mockery, blame, and revictimization.
With Sasha’s victory, everyone wins. It is a significant leap against normalizing abuse, even if it was because “back then it was different.” Of course, it was different; the evolution lies in changing what was wrong. Using the “crazy years” as justification for degradation is a resource of false morality that does not even remotely excuse the cruelty of twisting the life of a fourteen-year-old girl.
In the fight for women’s suffrage, English women fought at the cost of imprisonment and their lives in the early 20th century. The newspaper The Daily Mirror published an editorial in 1906 that stated: “By what other means, but through shouting, violence, and disturbances, did men manage to conquer what they proudly refer to as their rights today?”. And indeed: there are causes and cases that are not talked about. They are shouted so that they can be heard.
I hope this case serves as an example for those who suffer, but above all for those who abuse. It took a lot for Sasha to be able to sing freely. Now she can.