Content note: this story describes sexual violence against minors

Two La Pampa judges convicted Lucío Dupuy’s mother on Tuesday of sexually abusing her son. Magdalena Espósito Valenti is already serving a life sentence after she and her partner, Abigail Páez, were convicted of killing the five-year-old in February, but only Páez had been convicted of abuse.

Dupuy was killed on November 26, 2021, in the house he lived in with his mother and her partner. He died of brain damage caused by severe beating. Additionally, his body showed burns, bites, and internal hemorrhage. The autopsy also revealed that the child had been sexually abused in the weeks leading to his death.

Espósito was acquitted of sexual abuse during the February trial because the judges ruled there was not enough evidence to convict her on that charge — although she was found guilty of homicide aggravated on the grounds of her relationship to the child, cruelty, and malice aforethought.

However, prosecutors María Mónica Rivero and Verónica Ferrero said that there was strong criminal evidence that was not properly evaluated during the trial. Judges María Eugenia Schijvarger and Mauricio Piombi analyzed the evidence presented during the trial and concluded that Dupuy’s mother had in fact carried out sexual abuse, dismissing February’s acquittal. This is because “the time of death determined by the forensics team placed her in the apartment at the time when the fatal beating and sexual abuse happened.”

The court has now convicted Espósito Valenti of aggravated sexual assault.

Defense lawyers María Silvina Blanco Gómez and Alejandra Moyano González had called for Espósito Valenti’s acquittal, saying she wasn’t there when the beating happened, and that Páez’s sentence be downgraded to manslaughter. They also challenged the credibility of biopsy results and psychological and psychiatric interviews done on the defendants, claiming they had been altered.

Espósito Valenti and Lucio’s father, Cristian Dupuy, started a dispute over the child’s custody in 2020 after they separated. The boy had been living under the guardianship of his aunt and uncle because his parents could not afford to support him, and Dupuy wished for him to remain with them. But Espósito Valenti and Páez were granted custody of him in November of that year. 

The couple’s neighbors said they heard Espósito Valenti and Páez plotting to hurt him, while the mothers of Lucio’s friends stated that he was not fed nor taken care of. Voice notes shared between the pair and later analyzed as evidence also showed they thought of him as a problem in their relationship.

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—with information from Télam