Guatemala city
AP
–
A Guatemalan judge found six people guilty of various crimes Tuesday in connection with the death of 41 girls in a 2017 fire at a facility for at-risk youths who have a history of abuse.
They all declared their innocence on Tuesday. Judge Ingrid Cifuentes served a cumulative sentence of six to 25 years for charges ranging from manslaughter to abuse of authority. She also ordered former President Jimmy Morales to investigate his role in ordering police to work in facilities where minors who have not committed crimes are committed.
Prosecutors had demanded sentences up to 131 years on some of the previously convicted. He was a former government worker, including several obligations, including protecting children.
Carlos Rodas’ former social welfare secretary was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
Previously, Rodas told those gathered in the court, including the victim’s parents, that he “did not harm his daughter or survivors.”
Also among those convicted were former police officer Lucinda Marrokin. He held the key to the room where the girls were locked up and they didn’t open when the fire began. She was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
The judge said through telephone records, investigators were able to establish what Marrokin was talking about on her phone at the time of the fire. The judge said that when witnesses were spoken about the fire, Marrokin testified that he responded with a blasphemy and said, “Let them burn.”
The former government prosecutor assigned to protect children was acquitted.
On March 8, 2017, a girl from Virgen de la Asunción Safe Home, 14 miles east of Guatemala, illuminated a foam mattress that had been lit in a room where a group of girls had been locked up for hours without accessing the bathroom. Smoke and flames quickly filled the room, killing 41 girls and injuring 15.
About 700 children (no one knew exactly many) lived in the house with a maximum capacity of 500. The majority committed no crime. They were sent there by the court for a variety of reasons. They ran away, abused, immigrants.
On the eve of the fire, a group of girls fled. A few hours later, police returned them home. They were locked up in a room where they had no access to the bathroom and were protected by the police. They were given a foam mattress to sleep.
After demanding that it be released for hours, a girl lighted the fire.
Cifuentes said the fire was the culmination of a series of abuses, some of which had been reported to authorities but had not acted. She said the autopsy confirmed the presence of the drug in some of the girls who supported complaints that they were given sleeping pills, one of the reasons they tried to escape from the facility.
