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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Two more women come forward after sexual assault complaint against Arias
Human Rights Watch communications director Emma Daly gives an interview about her 1990 encounter with former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, in New York on Wednesday. Photo: AP
/ AP, SAN JOSE
Two more women have accused former Costa Rican president Oscar Arias, a Nobel peace laureate, of sexual misconduct after a criminal complaint alleging sexual assault against another woman was filed against him this week in the Central American nation.
Eleonora Antillon, a well-known Costa Rican journalist and TV presenter, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Arias assaulted her in the mid-1980s when she was working for his fledgling presidential bid.
In a separate interview, Emma Daly, communications director for Human Rights Watch, said that Arias groped her in a hotel lobby in Nicaragua in 1990 when she was working as a young journalist based in Costa Rica.
The New York Times also reported that a fourth woman, a 53-year-old book editor, alleged that Arias unexpectedly put his hand on her leg during a meeting in 2012.
In Brazil, starting in December last year, more than 250 women accused a prominent spiritual healer of acts from unwanted fondling to rape, leading to his arrest and a raft of charges.
In Argentina, accusations ranging from sexual assault to sexual harassment have been leveled against the likes of a well-known actor, a senator and a legislative chief of staff.
However, none have had a profile like Arias, who was twice elected president of Costa Rica and in 1987 was honored with the Nobel Peace Prize for his work bringing an end to Central America’s protracted and bloody civil wars.
The criminal complaint filed on Monday in Costa Rica charged that Arias fondled a woman’s breasts, kissed her and penetrated her with his fingers in December 2014 at his home in the capital, San Jose.
The woman, a nuclear disarmament activist whose name was not released, had gone there for a meeting related to her cause.
In a brief statement on Tuesday, Arias denied the allegation.
He said he never violated the will of any woman and fought for gender equality during his career.
He said that he would not have further public comment because of the pending legal case.
As more allegations emerged on Wednesday, his lawyer, Erick Ramos, echoed that, saying that “out of respect for the process that is in course, we are not going to make any kind of declaration.”
Daly said she began thinking about the incident more amid the rise of #MeToo, making an oblique reference to “Even a president and Nobel laureate” in a comment on a friend’s Facebook post in October 2017.
She said she thought about naming Arias at the time, but decided not to.
Daly first told her story publicly to a Washington Post reporter who reached out to her on Tuesday.
She said she felt she was in a privileged place — she was not going to lose her job, her family support — so it was important to speak out.
She said the difficult thing is that Arias has done good work in his professional life, with the peace plan, but that does not give him a pass to mistreat people.
“It would be really wonderful if this spurred some kind of a reckoning in Latin America with men who harass women,” Daly said, “particularly at work ... some kind of moment where they understood that there’s a need for systemic change and it’s really not OK to just touch women because you feel like it.”
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
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