News commentators are wondering how such a person could have been named prosecutor, but regardless, it took the Judicial Branch over a year to fire Samana prosecutor Robert Francis Justo Bobadilla, after seven women, including four employees, accused him of sexual harassment.
The firing took place on Tuesday, 1 August 2017, by the Inspectoría de la Procuraduría General de la República after witnesses appeared before the Disciplinary Council of the Public Ministry. Four Samana prosecutor office employees filed the sexual harassment claim against him for obliging them to have sex with him at their workplace.
Another of the pieces of evidence was an interview TV investigative journalist Alicia Ortega had done with one of his victims for her El Informe program. The woman said she suffered sexual aggression when she went to file a claim for gender violence at the prosecutor office.
Justo Bobadilla defended himself alleging a group of lawyers who were angered by his recent decisions had orchestrated the women’s sexual harassment stories. The group of lawyers was supposedly upset with Bobadilla when the prosecutor aggressively pursued charges against drug traffickers who supposedly had connections to officials.
But the Disciplinary Council of the Public Ministry declared him at fault for committing serious violations in the exercise of his duties and ordered that he not be allowed to hold office in the Public Ministry or any other government post for five years.
Justo Bobadilla may now tried in court to answer the sexual harassment charges against him.
Read more in Spanish:
Al Momento
Listin Diario
El Nacional
3 August 2017
