In 2010, during the ratification process to which the late National Council of Magistracy ―now the National Board of Justice (JNJ)—, Patricia Benavides He was a prosecutor of the 48th Provincial Criminal Prosecutor’s Office of Lima and attended a case of sexist violence in his office. A potential femicide threw boiling water at her partner, although the magistrate described the attack as “minor injuries.”
The case was evidenced during the personal interview with which he sought to promote supreme prosecutora questioned application process in which postgraduate studies and the theses that made her master’s and doctorate (currently missing) were decisive.
During the interview, one of the JNJ counselors asked Patricia Benavides to what caused his action. “Indeed, it is a case that reached the prosecutor’s office. (The attacker) did not come with an arrest (…) and my office requested a preliminary arrest,” argued the now National Prosecutor.
“We proceeded to file the complaint for (minor) injuries because we did not have the technical support, which is the Legal Medicine certificate (…) When preparing the criminal complaint, we filed culpable injuries and that this could vary throughout the process , because (in the course) it is determined if there was some type of facial disfigurement (or another) that leads to serious injuries, “he continued.
“Was the medical certificate what determined (the decision to qualify the attempted femicide as “minor injuries”)?, the counselor consulted again. “Yes, because prosecutors rely on (that), our base is technical support; in this case, the legal medical certificate“, accurate Benavides.
According to Epicenter TV, At this stage of the application, the magistrate arrived as one of the favorites (in the knowledge exam she had obtained 98.00 points —above her closest competitor, the prosecutor Gianina Tapia (91.00)—; compared to the 100.00 she reached in their curricular evaluation).
In the final stretch, the interview —which lasted more than an hour—, the current head of the Public Ministry scored 82.14. Only the counselor Aldo Vasquez mentioned this case of gender violence in his evaluation, as stated in the official document of the JNJ released on Wednesday by the research portal.
vasquez He expressed his surprise at the accusation made by the prosecutor and, in parallel, indicated that regarding public policies “he only recognizes one of the nine with priority objectives.”
In turn, the counselor Ines Tello indicated that the speech of Benavides “It is not clear, he generalizes in his projections” and “he did not give answers to the questions about the proposals for constitutional and legal change that he makes in the essay he prepared.”
Imelda Tumialán, therefore, was the toughest evaluator with the magistrate: He placed in the minutes that “he does not respond to his perception of whether the justice system is corrupt (and that) when cross-examined, the answer is not precise and is quite generic.”
“(It is) confusing its definition of autonomy (of the Public ministry), with a certain degree of ignorance”, and, like other colleagues, he also attributed “ignorance about public policies”.
Despite the fact that he requested it, Epicenter TV could not access details of how each JNJ counselor scored the curriculum of Benavideswhose master’s and doctoral theses are not available to date.
The same Peruvian Wings University has admitted that the two documents are missing, because in those years no university was required to have a repository. The body, strictly speaking, investigates irregularities regarding the doctoral thesis.
Benavides, who leads the open cases against Pedro Castillo and Dina Boluarte, is also implicated in alleged irregularities in the changes of the special team Cuellos Blancos, which follows a network of corruption in the Judiciary; and in the improper use of her position to benefit her sister in an investigation into alleged bribes to release inmates accused of drug trafficking.
Until now, the prosecutor has opted for silence, despite the fact that her last appearance occurred this Thursday in Tacna, where she visited the headquarters of the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office and urged the magistrates to continue their work with “order, firmness, and speed.”
