Forensic report concludes law student Debanhi Escobar was raped and murdered as Mexico’s president vows justice

Mexico’s president has promised justice to the dad and mom of a law student whose loss of life triggered a public outcry, after an impartial forensic report concluded that she was raped and murdered.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with the household of 18-year-old Debanhi Escobar, whose physique was discovered final month in a motel water tank 12 days after she disappeared.

“I spoke with them and made a commitment to help clarify what happened and to ensure that there is no impunity,” Lopez Obrador stated Friday within the northern metropolis of Monterrey, the place the incident occurred.

They are “very good people, a teacher, his wife, and as parents they are very hurt, broken,” he advised reporters.

Escobar’s loss of life is now being investigated as femicide, after initially being registered as a disappearance, Deputy Security Minister Ricardo Mejia stated.

The forensic report commissioned by the household concluded that the law student suffered “a violent homicidal death,” and her physique confirmed indicators of a sexual violence, in response to Spanish newspaper El Pais, which obtained the doc.

Escobar’s household delivered the doc to the state prosecutor’s office on May 2, the each day reported.

The official post-mortem report, which has not been printed, didn’t point out indicators of sexual violence, in response to El Pais.

Previously, prosecutors stated that Escobar died of a blow to the top and that they weren’t ruling something out, together with an accident or homicide.

An eerie photograph taken on the night time that Escobar disappeared exhibiting her standing in the dead of night by the roadside after an altercation with a taxi driver went viral.

She rapidly turned an emblem for an offended ladies’s rights motion in a rustic the place round 10 ladies are murdered every single day.

The lawyer normal’s office within the northern state of Nuevo Leon, whose capital is Monterrey, dismissed two public prosecutors for “errors” and “omissions” within the case.

Theories concerning the teenager’s destiny have unfold on social networks and in some media, inspired by movies launched or leaked by prosecutors.

Video surveillance footage reveals Escobar’s actions after leaving the social gathering, having argued with a person, till she arrived on foot alone on the motel.

A short glimpse of her wanting via a restaurant window is the final picture of her alive.

Her father Mario Escobar stated in video posted late Thursday that if the prosecutor’s office was behind the leak of the forensic report to the media, then its heads ought to resign.

In 2021 alone, Mexico registered 3,751 murders of girls, most of that are nonetheless unpunished.

“Criminalization of the victims”

Psychosocial help specialist Valeria Moscoso sees a sample within the case of Escobar and others.

“The indolence, limited investigation capacity, criminalization of the victims and risk of impunity are being repeated,” she stated.

According to prosecutors, there have been 56 murders of girls this year in Nuevo Leon, 42 of which have been categorized as femicides — killings of girls due to their gender.

Around 300 ladies have disappeared within the state up to now in 2022, of which 90 % have been discovered alive.

Last month, Nuevo Leon Governor Samuel Garcia stated he would enhance funding and resources to assist fight gender violence, Reuters reported.

“We are working very hard to address the causes of this problem and I will be very clear: to the rapists, and those who commit feminicide, and all those who hurt the women of Nuevo Leon, know that we will find them and punish them to the fullest extent of the law,” Garcia said in a Facebook post.

The downside extends all through Mexico, the place in 2021 there have been 3,751 murders of girls, most of that are nonetheless unpunished.

Nearly 100,000 individuals have gone lacking nationwide, principally since 2006 when the deployment of the navy within the battle of medication set off a spiral of violence.

Escobar’s loss of life sparked unusually intense media curiosity in Mexico, whose femicide disaster dates again to the Nineties and impacts poorer ladies specifically, lots of them killed by their companions.

Last month, lots of of girls marched via downtown Mexico City and its suburbs to protest Escobar’s loss of life.

Marchers chanted “Justice, justice!” and carried a banner studying “24,000 are missing” about disappeared ladies. Overall in Mexico, the variety of lacking individuals of all genders has risen to over 100,000.