From violent protests on the streets of Caracas after the Supreme Court annulled the National Assembly plunging Venezuela deep in a political crisis, President Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorial scrapping of democratic institutions topped headlines this week across the region. In Colombia, however, two courageous women, victims of sexual assault, were remembered:
Justice for Yuliana
The confessed killer of 7 year old Yuliana Samboní, Rafael Uribe Noguera was sentenced Wednesday March 29 by a Bogotá judge to serve 51 years and 10 months in La Picota maximum security prison. Uribe Noguera, the 38 year old architect from an influential family, snatched the small indigenous girl as she was playing with her cousins in front of her home in the poor shanty Bosque Calderón on December 6.
During several hours in the killer’s Chapinero Alto apartment, Yuliana was tortured and repeatedly raped before dying by strangulation. Uribe Noguera was arrested and charged with kidnapping, violent carnal access and femicide.
During the court ruling, the judge declared that Uribe Noguera must serve a sentence of 622 months, reducing by 8 years the expected 60 year maximum sentence, after the architect confessed to his crimes. “It is a call to victims to have the opportunity to do justice,” said the judge, and who told the prosecution that the conviction against Uribe Noguera was not a trophy: “Nothing has been gained.” Yuliana’s father, Juvencio Samboní regretted the judge’s decision not to impose the maximum life sentence.
Uribe Noguera will not be eligible for any type of reduction in his sentence as the law that rules on femicide in Colombia prohibits any form of judicial benefit.
The investigation into Yuliana’s disappearance began hours after Yuliana’s mother, Nelly Samboní, contacted the National Police reporting her missing daughter. Yuliana’s two small cousins claimed a grey SUV had entered the Bosque Calderón neighborhood, and while Yuliana’s mother was in the back patio of the family home organizing canisters to collect water, Yuliana was snatched by Uribe Noguera and forced into the front seat of his car.
Yuliana body was discovered that same Sunday by Colombia’s anti-kidnapping squad Gaula, in Uribe Noguera’s duplex apartment, with bite marks and signs of extreme torture. According to a testimony by a close relative of the Samboní who spoke with The City Paper: “Yuliana’s body had been crushed so severely that the city’s chief coroner at Medicina Legal requested that Juvencio not view her entire body at the morgue.”
Ponce de Leon in Washington
While a Bogotá judge handed down the sentence in the case of Yuliana Samboní, in Washington D.C., First Lady Melania Trump was honoring 13 brave women from across the world during her first State Department’s International Women of Courage ceremony. Among those who received the award for their contributions to peace, security, and women’s rights, was Colombia’s Natalia Ponce de Leon.
The 35-year old Ponce de Leon was attacked by a stalker with a litre of sulphuric acid on March 2014 as she left her home in the north of Bogotá. The chemical agent caused severe burns to Ponce de Leon’s face requiring multiple surgeries to reconstruct her features. After a series of acid attacks on women in Bogotá and the sadistic nature of the Ponce de Leon crime, Colombia’s criminal law increased penalties for assailants.
