Six former Guatemalan public officials were convicted on Tuesday in connection with a 2017 fire that killed 41 girls who had been locked in a classroom in a government-run group home.
Ingrid Cifuentes, a judge in Guatemala City, handed down cumulative prison sentences as long as 25 years and some as short as six years against the six defendants, who had pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors had sought longer sentences.
Family members of the girls cried and hugged while sitting in the courtroom during the hearing.
The fire, which occurred on March 8, 2017, was one of the deadliest tragedies in Guatemala since the end of the civil war decades ago. The blaze broke out in a home for at-risk youth who had been placed there by the government.
Santos Torres, the former head of the home, called Hogar Seguro Virgen de la Asunción, and Carlos Rodas, the former head of the government’s social welfare office, were each sentenced to at least 20 years in prison on charges of child abuse, dereliction of duty, abuse of authority and manslaughter.
Lucinda Marroquín — a former Guatemalan national police officer who had a key to the classroom but did not immediately open the door, the judge said — was sentenced to at least 13 years.
Brenda Chamán, who oversaw the group home’s office against abuse, received at least 12 years in prison; Luis Pérez Borja, a former national police subcommissioner, was sentenced to at least six years; and Gloria Castro, a former ombudsman focused on children’s abuses, was sentenced to six years. They were convicted of a variety of crimes, including child abuse, dereliction of duty, abuse of authority and manslaughter.
A seventh former public official, Harold Flores, the former head the child and adolescent protection division at a government office, was acquitted.
The group home, in the town of San José Pinula, about 13 miles from Guatemala City, was created for children with nowhere else to go but had a reputation for abuses. During the hearing on Tuesday, the judge highlighted a series of such abuses reported at the home.
Before the fire, nearly 100 of the children there had decided to flee en masse. But officials rounded them up and locked them inside: the boys in an auditorium and the girls in a small classroom.
After hours of incarceration — in which the girls were not allowed to use the bathroom — someone lit a match, thinking that a fire might force the police to let them out. Instead, most of the girls died as more than a dozen police officers argued over whether their supervisor, standing 10 feet away, should unlock the door with the keys hanging from her belt, according to court testimony.
The girls, who had broken no laws and were between 12 and 17 years old, had been survivors of sexual abuse, violence or abandonment — often at the hands of their own families.
Edgar Pérez, a human rights lawyer who represented some of the victims and their families, said that it was unlikely that the former public officials would soon end up in jail because the sentences may be appealed.
But he said the sentencing showed “that the state failed and the public officials that oversaw the child-protection system didn’t fulfill their duties.”
Elba Contreras, 22, who survived the fire, applauded the sentences and the judge’s order for a series of investigations into the case, including into former President Jimmy Morales for his role in ordering the police to go to the group home.
Ms. Contreras said the girls “will now rest in peace,” and “I can let them go.”
James Wagner covers Latin America, including sports, and is based in Mexico City. A Nicaraguan American from the Washington area, he is a native Spanish speaker.
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