The following story contains graphic details of an alleged sexual assault.
Following Tuesday’s reports that former Costa Rican president Óscar Arias had allegedly sexually assaulted an activist in 2014, two other women have come forward with similar stories.
The Washington Post reported that Emma Daly was allegedly groped by Arias in 1990, when he was president and she was a reporter covering Central America for The Tico Times and Reuters. According to the report, Daly said that instead of answering a question she had asked, Arias “ran his hand between her breasts and exclaimed, ‘You’re not wearing a bra.'”
Daly said she did not consider filing a complaint against Arias “because of how common behavior like that was in Central America at the time,” according to the Post. She did recount the experience to her then-boyfriend, who corroborated the story to the Post.
Late Tuesday night, the daily La Nación published an interview with Nono Antillón, who in the mid-1980s worked in communications for the National Liberation Party as an advisor to Arias.
According to the report, Antillón said she was sitting in front of Arias’s desk when the politician “approached me, took my hand and put it on his erect penis.”
“I pushed him and I stood up, but he threw himself at me,” the report quotes Antillón as saying. “He grabbed me by the shoulders, threw me against a closet and began to touch me. Due to the noise, people began to knock on the door.
“From then on, I did not accept being alone with him.”
According to La Nación, Antillón said she did not speak publicly on the matter prior to this week “because society is not ready to believe us. […] I would never have been able to make myself heard at that time, and the truth is that now it seems I owed this to myself.”
“It gave me fury, impotence, disgust, shame, to see him live on a throne of honesty, of ethics, as a great politician, as a Peace Prize winner.”
Arias, through his lawyer, has “categorically denied” accusations of sexual misconduct, saying he “never acted in a way that disrespected the will of any woman.”
Read The Washington Post’s story here. Read La Nación’s story here.
Read more coverage from The Tico Times about the news, and check back for further developments:
This story was made possible thanks to The Tico Times 5 % Club. If only 5 percent our readers donated at least $2 a month, we’d have our operating costs covered and could focus on bringing you more original reporting from around Costa Rica. We work hard to keep our reporting independent and groundbreaking, but we can only do it with your help. Join The Tico Times 5% Club and help make stories like this one possible.
