Sunday, January 29, 2023 | 10:05 p.m.
Cristian Dupuy is anxious. He wants it to arrive as soon as possible on February 2. He wants it to be 12 noon on that Thursday so he can be inside the main courtroom in Santa Rosa. The father of Lucio Dupuy, the boy cruelly murdered on November 26, feels the need to hear the decision of justice regarding the little boy’s mother and his girlfriend, the main accused of the crime.
On the day of the verdict, the judges will decide whether Magdalena Espósito Valenti, Lucio’s mother, and his girlfriend, Abigaíl Páez, are sentenced to life imprisonment or acquitted. Due to the accumulation of evidence against them exposed in the oral debate, logic indicates that they should be sentenced. That is what Lucio’s father expects and expresses it in his dialogue with Infobae: “Today I trust justice, not before. It failed me before. But today I am confident that the verdict is the one we ask for and the one they deserve.”
The accusation against the two women is extremely serious. It takes up a whole paragraph: “Seriously insulting sexual abuse due to the circumstances of realization with carnal access via anal with an object; aggravated by having been committed by the ascendant; with the help of two people and taking advantage of living with the victim under 18 years of age; everything as a continued crime; in real competition with homicide qualified for being the ascendant, for cruelty and treachery ”. To this, the complaint added the aggravating circumstance of “gender hatred.”
Almost all the members of the Dupuy family agree on one phrase when talking to them: “we transform pain into action”. And that is precisely what Lucio’s father does. He explains it: “Every day both my father (Ramón, Lucio’s grandfather) receive messages from fathers, mothers and grandparents with situations like the one we are experiencing. The fight that we are in, which is the Lucio Law, is very necessary. Our idea is to save children like Lucio. We want them to be heard. That is our goal today.”
As reported by this medium, the Lucio law was included in the extraordinary sessions and will be dealt with in the Senate. It already has half the sanction of Deputies, so the project is in its final stretch of approval. In the event that this happens, the norm will promote the creation of the “Federal Training Plan of a continuous, permanent and obligatory nature, in the rights of children and adolescents”, which seeks to train agents of public institutions to detect signs of domestic violence.
The fight to save the “possible Lucios”, says Cristian, is a fight not only for him but for the whole family: “Working with the boys is our goal. Both my dad and my mom swore to Lucio that this is going to be his fight every day. I always say that if we are standing it is because of all the people who gave us their support and because of this objective that we have to save children”.
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Cristian’s long wait for justice has been nuanced in recent weeks. It is that on January 23, Matilda, Lucio’s little sister, was born. The arrival of a new member to the Dupuy family helps to heal, in something, everyone’s soul. The new father explains it: “we are receiving the birth of my daughter, which is a mixture of emotions. At this moment we can feel a bit of relief, of happiness with her arrival, so it makes it a little easier for us now the day”.
Cristian is a reserved person who doesn’t usually talk to the media. In fact, most of the interviews since Lucio’s murder were given by his father, Ramón. That reluctance has an explanation. “When I spoke, they criticized me a lot,” says Lucio’s father. Those unusual criticisms had to do with his supposed lack of interest in his son before the murder.
Nothing further from reality.
In one of the oral trial hearings, a series of conversations between Cristian and Lucio’s parent were exposed in which the father showed interest in the baby and struggled not to hand over possession. “He’s going to be fine with me,” she said in those talks, the one now accused of murdering him. In light of the facts, a phrase that even sounds sinister.
Two weeks ago, Cristian Dupuy decided to express his feelings. He did it through a heartbreaking letter on Facebook addressed to his son, Lucio Abel: “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) to see you in a drawer, when the law of life says that a son should bury his father, and not as it happened, “he began by expressing.
It may interest you: The family of Lucio Dupuy will sue the health system of La Pampa for having ignored the violence suffered by the baby
Lucio’s father’s letter
“A constant torture lives in me, remembering that beautiful laugh, and your little voice calling me ‘daddy’. Your sister keeps naming you, she doesn’t forget you and she never will, because your memory lives in us and, with the love we have for you, we can never forget you. My daddy, I want life to go by quickly, enjoying everything I have to see you again. I miss you,” she closed.
On the day of the sentence, the Dupuy family will be present in Santa Rosa. Cristian is, for now, the only one who is assured of being in the courtroom, since it is not a public trial.
During these hours, Cristian is moved by anxiety about the verdict, the need for justice for his son: “We are expectant and it is going to be a very important day for us and for society. I hope he gets life.”
