The Brazilian Justice confirmed the sentenced to six years in prison against the Argentine actor Juan Darthés for sexually abusing Thelma Fardin when she was 16 years old. The Federal Regional Court of the 3rd Region of Brazil rejected the admissibility of the two appeals – special and extraordinary – presented by the actor’s defense.
Fardin was in charge of breaking the news together with Amnesty International and its complaint made up of Carla Junqueira and Martín Arias Duval, through a video where he shared the long journey of the judicial process that took eight years. “We won again,” wrote the actress.
“The resolution constitutes a new decisive step in a historic judicial process for sexual violence and reaffirms the importance of listening to victims, investigating with due diligence and judging with a gender perspective,” stated Amnesty International.
As they explained, this new ruling reaffirms that sexual violence was proven and that, at this stage, It is not appropriate to discuss the facts or the evidence again, that were already evaluated by the Justice and that supported the actor’s sentence to six years in prison in a semi-open regime for sexual violence against Fardin.
The former member of the Ugly Duckling cast still has an appeal before the Court, which is why he cannot yet be imprisoned. “The actor has all appeals exhausted, the appeal has been rejected and he only has the complaint for denial of appeal left,” Amnesty International explained.
In case of being imprisoned will enjoy a semi-open prison regime, benefit that the Judiciary grants to the not repeat offenders-those who have not committed the same crime on another occasion and were convicted for it-with sentences greater than four years and less than eight.
According to the articles 33 and 35 of the Brazilian Penal Codethe semi-open regime allows the convicted person to leave prison both for perform common work during the day in “agricultural colonies, industrial establishments or places of similar origin” such as “attending complementary professional courses, secondary or higher education.” Once the work or study day is over, the inmate must return to prison and sleep in his or her respective cell.
The court case
In December 2018, Fardin together with the Argentine Actresses collective publicly denounced a aggravated sexual abuse against Juan Darthés, allegedly occurred in Nicaragua when she was 16 years old and he was 45, while both were participating in a tour of the strip Ugly Duckling.
Five years later, in May 2023, Darthés was acquitted of the accusation of sexual abuse with carnal access by the Brazilian justice system. That first instance ruling was signed by Judge Fernando Toledo Carneiro, deputy of the Federal Criminal Court 7 of San Pablowhere the process against Juan Pacífico – such as the actor’s birth name – was continued after a request from the prosecutor’s office made on April 6, 2021 was accepted. At that time, an international arrest warrant was weighing on the actor, issued on October 17, 2019 by a court in Managua, where the opening of the case for “aggravated rape” had been accepted after Fardin traveled to Nicaragua to ratify the complaint for the events that occurred on the 17th. May 2009.
At that time, the sentence acquitted Darthés because “penetration” was not proven, which according to the criminal offense in force at the time of the events was a requirement for sentencing. That is to say, until 2009, it was considered “aggravated rape” when there was sexual intercourse, which is what, according to the judge, could not be determined. The magistrate stated that the report of three other women would demonstrate the defendant’s modus operandi and that the witnesses proposed by the complaint were clear at the time of telling the details of the abuse that Fardin had told them, but that was not enough for a conviction for rape. Beyond highlighting the coincidences of the statements and the support given by psychological experts to the victim, Toledo Carneiro maintained his position of not judging the abuse described, but rather the investigated crime of rape and, in that case, he defined that the doubt benefited the accused.
“We must not forget that we are judging a specific case, about a specific crime,” Toledo Carneiro said in the ruling, implying that the acquittal of Darthés implied that it could not be confirmed that it had been abuse with carnal access. “The victim’s version was not consistent regarding carnal relations, since for more than nine years this fact was omitted in the few complaints she made to people she trusted,” added the magistrate.
“I’m tired, but they’re not going to break me,” Fardin said during the conference given at the offices of Amnesty International Argentina after hearing that first ruling, in which he confirmed that he was going to appeal the sentence. “Thank you for being here after all this time. In a judicial key, my lawyers speak, I want to speak in a social key. I think that the change we made and of which my case is just an emerging one, one more example, is a battle that we won,” reflected the actress, visibly mobilized. “Of course, Justice is going to be the last bastion of a historically violent and patriarchal system. I want to ask all those people who dared to break the silence, to speak after that conference in 2018, not to feel that this indoctrinates them. Don’t indoctrinate me, please, don’t indoctrinate you,” he added.
Junqueira, Fardin’s lawyer before the Brazilian justice system, said at the time: “Until 2009, in Brazil, the test of sexual intercourse was required for a rape case. Then it was reformed and the penetration test was no longer required.” As the events investigated would have occurred at the end of 2009, the judge decided on that occasion to apply the law prior to 2010. “It is a first-instance ruling and due to a technicality. The ruling does not speak of innocence. This decision, which is of the first instance and can be appealed in the second and third instance and in international courts, does not declare Darthés innocent. On the contrary, the ruling was very clear in interpreting the facts and evidence and considering that there were acts of sexual violence. If the incident had occurred after 2010, the applicable law would be different,” he indicated.
In June 2024 the actor was sentenced to six years in prison by the Brazilian Justice in the case of aggravated sexual abuse against Thelma Fardin. It happened in a second instance ruling that declared the actor guilty and argued: “In accordance with the modifications of Law No. 12,015, of 2009, in article 213 of the Penal Code, ‘force a person through violence or serious threat to have carnal relations or to practice or allow any libidinous act to be practiced with them.'”
