The girl is still wearing the traditional dress she had worn just hours earlier for her Mother’s Day festival. In front of at least eight people—including at least three police officers—the minor’s father struggles to restrain her. In a state of crisis, she screams desperately, weeping, kicking, and running in an attempt to escape, while her cries can be heard: “Help! Please, please, don’t let him take me!”
Despite the gravity of the allegations the little girl is screaming about her father—who is attempting to take her away—none of the adults at the scene flinch. Meanwhile, the girl’s aunt, watching the events unfold through tears, attempts to explain to the police officers that she possesses photographs proving the beatings that same man inflicted upon her sister when they were still married.
The incident took place on May 27 in Piedras Negras, a border municipality located in the northern part of the state of Coahuila. In a separate video recorded that same day, the girl—now slightly calmer, though still weeping uncontrollably—describes to a municipal police officer how she discovered her father inappropriately touching her “private parts.”
The officer listens to her account, yet nothing happens. The conversation is also witnessed by several other members of the same police force, who watch from a distance without taking any action. Incredibly, even as the little girl screams and attempts to flee, several men present at the scene arrive, exchange friendly back-pats, and simply continue their conversation.
The footage—which has since gone viral due to the outrage it has sparked—shows absolutely no one, at any point, offering any form of support, assistance, or emotional comfort to the minor. Her aunt, who witnesses the entire ordeal, can be heard pleading with the officers not to let the girl be taken away until personnel from the Office of the Prosecutor for Children and Families (Pronnif) arrive.
Testimonies shared by the minor’s mother, Vica Torres, on her social media accounts detail that the events took place on the day of a school festival—an event she was unable to attend due to a restraining order prohibiting her from approaching the child. This legal measure was sought by her ex-partner—the child’s father—Eduardo Alejandro Morales Cervera, an attorney who had been granted custody of the minor. According to Torres, she slapped her daughter a few months ago at the moment Morales Cervera reappeared in the child’s life after having been absent for the previous four years; it was for this reason that she lost custody and Cervera requested the restraining order.
Torres has also recounted the violence she suffered at Cervera’s hands while they were together, as well as the failure of various institutions—both then and now—to address her complaints. These very institutions, despite having records of the domestic violence inflicted upon her, ultimately granted custody to her abuser.
“I have gone to the Municipal Pronnif [Child Protection Agency], the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the District Attorney’s Office… They leave me waiting for hours without resolving anything—without even taking my immediate report,” Torres wrote on May 30. She added: “I divorced this man because of the multiple beatings he inflicted upon me. When I tried to file a report, they wouldn’t attend to me; I would leave, unwilling to waste any more of my time.”
What transpired that day took a turn for the worse. Torres was detained after her ex-partner called the police to have her arrested; meanwhile, her daughter was escorted away by four police officers and her father to another location, where she was left in the care of her paternal grandparents—individuals with whom, Torres asserts, the child shares no bond due to their years of absence from her life.
The Municipal President of Piedras Negras—Carlos Jacobo Rodríguez González, a member of the MORENA party—has denied that the municipality bears any responsibility for the omissions and acts of negligence evident in the video footage of the incident. He maintains that certain accusations identifying the alleged abuser as a former municipal employee are false, clarifying that it was actually the man’s brother who worked there—and only for a period of a few months. He also holds the state offices of Pronnif responsible for the error and asserts that his municipal delegation could even take on tasks that rightfully belong to them.
“I don’t want to cast blame right now—because this isn’t the moment for it—but I truly wish they would grant full responsibility to the municipal Pronnif. Just so they could see [how we would handle it]. And all of this—the problem involving the girl—stemmed from an error committed by the state Pronnif; that is the reality,” the councilman stated in a video posted to his social media accounts this Monday, in response to questions from the public. Furthermore, he explained: “The mother lost custody of the girl not without cause, but due to an alleged act of aggression—a supposed blow or blows—inflicted upon the girl by her mother.”
The councilman noted that the first to respond to the scene on May 27 were officers from the Prosecutor’s Office—officers who, he maintains, should have intervened on the minor’s behalf. He explained that municipal police officers arrived subsequently, and suggested that the jurisdictional error may have stemmed from the fact that the Pronnif personnel did not arrive “more quickly.”
