The case is now heading to oral trial. According to the complaint filed by Rakauskas, the accused met with her in her apartment on three occasions for work purposes, and on one of them, in May 2021, he allegedly made advances that resulted in forced touching despite her resistance. The mayor was prosecuted by the Criminal Court, which rejected the various nullity requests presented by his defense. What did the Public Ministry say about the case? Prosecutor Mónica Cuñarro, in charge of the case for alleged sexual abuse against Fernando Espinoza, based her request for dismissal on the lack of concrete evidence supporting the complaint filed by the former private secretary, Melody Rakauskas. Cuñarro emphasized that the request was made in line with her predecessor, Prosecutor Leonel Gómez Barbella, who also considered the evidence insufficient to continue the criminal action. The Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation rejected a recourse from the mayor of La Matanza, Fernando Espinoza, against his prosecution for simple sexual abuse and disobedience to a judicial order, and ordered his provisional release and the prohibition of approaching and contacting the victim, Melody Jacqueline Rakauskas, the official's former private secretary, who made the accusations public. The ruling, signed by judges Horacio Rosatti, Carlos Rosenkrantz, and Ricardo Lorenzetti, dismissed the complaint because it was not directed against a final sentence. The prosecutor detailed that for a year and a half, the complainant refused to testify at the prosecutor's office. According to Cuñarro, the complainant did not hand over her phone or agree to undergo psychological examinations, used recordings that did not provide relevant elements, and there are no records or witnesses to support her version of the events. Additionally, she pointed out that there are also no medical records of assaults and mentioned the existence of cases in other jurisdictions where the complainant herself was accused of extortion. The position of the prosecutor's office was clear: while the presence of Espinoza in the complainant's home is not disputed, what is relevant is what happened behind closed doors and what could be proven.
