SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chilean President Gabriel Boric is under investigation for sexual harassment, authorities confirmed Tuesday after his personal lawyer sought to portray the head of state as a victim of online stalking.
The country’s attorney general, Cristián Crisosto, in a statement said prosecutors have opened “a criminal case related to" allegations filed by an unidentified woman in September.
The complaint alleges sexual harassment as well as the leaking of private images. Crisosto did not provide details of the alleged events, or say when or where they took place.
Boric, 38, has denied the accusations through his attorney, Jonatan Valenzuela, who in a statement described the president as “the victim of systematic harassment via email.” The alleged harassment occurred between July 2013 and July 2014, when Boric was an intern in the southern Chilean city of Punta Arenas, near the Patagonia, and was already a well-known figure in national politics thanks to his role in student-led protests a couple of years earlier.
Valenzuela said Boric “never had an emotional or friendly relationship” with the woman and both have not been in communication since July 2014 when she is alleged to have sent the last of dozens of emails, some with explicit images, to the now president.
Valenzuela said his team handed authorities all communications between Boric and the woman after learning of her complaint, to “clarify the status of the president as a victim.”
FILE - President Gabriel Boric adjusts his glasses while standing outside his office at La Moneda presidential palace, in Santiago Chile, May 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)
Camila Vallejo, government spokeswoman, speaks during a news conference on the harassment complaint against Chilean President Gabriel Boric, at La Moneda, presidential palace in Santiago, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix)
FILE - President Gabriel Boric attends the inauguration of the annual National Meeting of Entrepreneurs in Santiago, Chile, April 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Esteban Felix, File)
MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A New Hampshire jury on Tuesday found a former leader at a youth detention center guilty of holding down a teen while he was raped in 1998.
Bradley Asbury, now 70, was found guilty on two counts of being an accomplice to aggravated sexual assault. He faces a maximum prison term of 20 years on each count. The jury deliberated over three days following a four-day trial.
Asbury served as a house leader at the Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester. He was accused of restraining 14-year-old Michael Gilpatrick on a staircase with help from a colleague, while a third staffer raped the teen and a fourth forced him to perform a sex act.
It was the second criminal trial to stem from a broad 2019 investigation into longstanding abuse at the center. Asbury is among 11 men who worked there or at an associated facility in Concord who were arrested.
The case turned on the testimony of Gilpatrick, now 41. He said he’d struggled to cope with the attack for many years and that talking about it at the trial was part of a healing process.
He said he wanted to hold the perpetrators accountable and recalled having an out-of-body experience during the attack.
“I can see it happening, but I can’t do anything,” he testified. “I was just not there. But there.”
After the verdict was read Tuesday afternoon, Gilpatrick cried and hugged family members.
“God is good and the truth prevailed. And I was believed," he said as he left the courthouse.
Meanwhile, Asbury shook his head as he was handcuffed and thanked his family and supporters as he was led away.
Outside the courtroom, Gilpt“God is good and the truth prevailed. And I was believed.”
Last week, Gilpatrick got into several heated exchanges during cross-examination, and at one point called the defense lawyer a “sick man” as the attorney urged him to repeat his claim of rape over and over.
During closing arguments, the lawyer, David Rothstein, said “I want to apologize to anyone I may have upset during that exchange, or any other exchange.”
Rothstein said Gilpatrick lived in an imaginary world in which he’d created villains to explain things that had gone wrong in his life.
“Mike Gilpatrick falsely accused Brad Asbury of a crime that he not only didn’t commit, but which, in every shape and form, was virtually impossible to commit,” Rothstein said.
He said there were no eyewitnesses or corroborating pieces of evidence, and that Gilpatrick had changed crucial details over time to suit the narrative. He said such an attack on an open staircase in the middle of the facility would have been seen or heard by somebody else.
He said Gilpatrick was motivated by money, pointing out he’d already received more than $146,000 against an anticipated payout from a related civil case.
The prosecution said Gilpatrick didn’t have perfect recall of all the events surrounding the rape but had always been consistent in his recall of the key event. He couldn’t tell anybody at the time, the prosecution said, because Asbury was in charge.
“Instead of guiding Mike, counseling him, showing him a better way to go out and live his life, these four grown men, including the defendant, shattered the trust,” said state Assistant Attorney General Adam Woods.
An earlier case against Victor Malavet ended in a mistrial in September after jurors deadlocked on whether he raped a girl at the Concord facility. A new trial in that case has yet to be scheduled.
The investigation has also led to extensive civil litigation. More than 1,100 former residents have filed lawsuits alleging physical, sexual or emotional abuse spanning six decades. In the only civil case to go to trial so far, a jury awarded David Meehan $38 million in May for abuse he says he suffered in the 1990s, though that verdict remains in dispute as the state seeks to reduce it to $475,000.
The Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they were victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly, as Meehan and Gilpatrick have done.
Defendant Bradley Asbury, left, accused of holding down a teenage boy so colleagues could rape him at a New Hampshire youth center in the 1990s, confers with his attorney David Rothstein during opening statements for his trial at Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, N.H.,, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)
Defense attorney David Rothstein, representing defendant Bradley Asbury who is accused of holding down a teenage boy so colleagues could rape him at a New Hampshire youth center in the 1990s, makes his opening statement in Asbury's trial at Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, N.H.,, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)
Assistant Attorney General Audriana Mekula holds a picture of alleged victim Michael Gilpatrick when he was 14 that she showed the jury during opening statements in the trial of Bradley Asbury at Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, N.H.,, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)
FILE - Michael Gilpatrick, a former youth detention center resident, fights back tears as testifies during a civil trial seeking to hold the state accountable for alleged abuse at the Sununu Youth Services Center, formerly called the Youth Development Center, April 17, 2024, at Rockingham County Superior Court in Brentwood, N.H. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool, File)
Defendant Bradley Asbury, accused of holding down a teenage boy so colleagues could rape him at a New Hampshire youth center in the 1990s, looks behind him while seated at the defendant's table during opening statements for his trial at Hillsborough County Superior Court in Manchester, N.H.,, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024. (David Lane/Union Leader via AP, Pool)
