The thief only wanted a cellphone. He stole one in Cali, managed to unlock it, and found videos of a woman allegedly abusing her 9-year-old daughter when he checked it. What was supposed to be just another theft ended up becoming the clue that exposed the case.
Accounts of what he did next differ. According to El Tiempo, he shared his discovery on social media. According to Caracol, he allegedly used the videos to contact the owner’s adult daughter and demand money, threatening to publish them. Whatever the truth, the material enabled authorities to identify the girl and locate the woman. On September 22, the Cali Metropolitan Police and the Attorney General’s Office’s Technical Investigation Corps (CTI) raided a home in the Eduardo Santos neighborhood and arrested her. The girl, the youngest of three siblings, was removed from that environment and placed in the care of ICBF psychosocial teams.
According to Vanguardia, two of the woman’s older children recognized the little girl in the videos as their sister and said they too may have suffered abuse at the hands of their mother. The Prosecutor’s Office is investigating whether the abuse was repeated with them. The woman says she did not publish the video and that the person who stole her phone did. The charges and investigation are ongoing: for now, everything is alleged, and there has been no conviction.