Psychiatrist accused of sexual abuse is asked to go to trial
CE Noticias Financieras English
September 9, 2024 Monday

The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Santos Eduardo Manzanares was accused of sexually abusing three women as part of his professional practice. The prosecutor investigating the case requested the elevation to trial at the end of last month. “In all cases there was a relationship of dependence, authority or power that put the perpetrator in a privileged position with respect to the victims,” says the prosecutor.

Mónica Cuñarro, National Prosecutor for Criminal and Correctional Matters, head of Prosecutor’s Office No. 16, considered in her request filed on August 30, that Manzanares committed the crime of “aggravated sexual abuse for having mediated carnal access on repeated occasions” to the detriment of a woman whom we will call MP and the crime of simple sexual abuse committed repeatedly –on an undetermined number of occasions– against VH, MPand GC.
The abuses occurred in the area of La Isla (ex Libertador) in Recoleta. The women were in a context of vulnerability due to their psychological condition: body perception problems, couple relationships, among other situations, and Manzanares, in his capacity as leader, mentor and guide of an alleged group took advantage to manipulate and capture their wills to the point of blocking them and in some cases abusing them.
“Santos Manzanares took advantage of his position of power, as a doctor, superior and asymmetric, of the vulnerability of the victims, as well as of the situation of power he exercised over them, on the bond of trust and the placement in a position of superior being that was bringing them closer to a worldview that would allow them to be free. Thus, he managed to overcome their will and this allowed the realization of the detailed sexual abuses suffered by the victims, which obviously were not freely consented”, says the document. All this framed in the context of gender violence.
In principle, Manzanares created a bond with the victims, as a mental health professional – psychiatrist – he generated a context of trust and emotional containment, to such an extent that they believed he would change the world.
“Manzanares instituted a cult of sexual freedom and of facing fears by breaking the limits of sexuality in order to achieve salvation. The accused was in a relationship of preeminence with respect to the victims, with whom he maintained a hierarchical or authoritative link due to his profession, so the victims tolerated, trusted, but did not consent,” explains Cuñarro in the brief. That is why, he says, it is plausible to speak in this case of an “invalid consent, with discernment, intention and freedom, due to the situational context in which the victims were immersed with demonstrative factors that their scope of self-determination was neutralized and, therefore, their consent was vitiated”.
VH narrated that she met the psychiatrist in 2016 and started working as a secretary also doing cleaning and cooking tasks for him in 2019. That year he started with behaviors that seemed strange to her, such as lifting her shirt and touching her back and getting angry when she complained to him. He would habitually say obscene comments about her body in her ear and if she got upset he would yell at her “you have so much darkness that’s why you can’t accept love.” He also touched her sexually on several occasions.
MP met Manzanares in 2018 when she was going through a couple crisis and started therapy and then joined a Thursday group. One day Manzanares asked her to spend more time with him, and as she believed it was the only way out for her to be able to sort out her life, she agreed. At the end of 2019, he summoned her to his house and groped her. That situation shocked her, because she did not expect it. Manzanares is an older person, who she saw as a grandfather, so she started to cry. “Although she was angry with Manzanares, she continued going in the belief that he would help her with her problems, but the situation worsened, each time his actions progressed, he would throw himself on her, touch her. She attended the sessions anguished, crying, but she felt she could not leave him, she felt submissive to him, blocked, totally manipulated. Such was the manipulation that she managed to get him to perform oral sex on her, a situation that happened on more than one occasion and culminated in tears on her part, while Manzanares made her believe that she was going to be fine with him. All this happened until February 2020 when he began to harass another girl, then he began to denigrate and torture her psychologically,” the document says.
GC met Manzanares in 2020. On one occasion he touched her in erogenous zones without her consent, with the excuse that “he wanted to feel her heart”, then tried to kiss her and once succeeded in doing so.
Seven testimonies corroborate the complainants’ statements. “Manzanares had this manipulative tendency that he needed to recruit people, he had a sectarian component, he talked about the people in the groups as if they were his disciples, which meant that he was putting himself in another place above the others. He had the power to break people’s will,” says Cuñarro.
The psychological expert reports on the victims and Manzanares corroborated that the women suffered “maneuvers of recruitment, manipulation, subjugation, placement in the place of partners, favored by an anxious expectation of a magical solution to their problems”. The asymmetrical situation finds its correlate in the conclusions of the psychological examination of Manzanares, where “marked narcissistic traits” were noted.
Cuñarro told this newspaper that it is important that the victims trust the prosecution: “Their enormous courage helps other victims not to go through the same aberrations”.