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LIMA, Peru (AP) \u2014 Ten men were convicted Wednesday in Peru for raping nine teenagers while serving in the military during the country\u2019s armed conflict decades ago.<\/p>\n
Judge Marco Angulo, of Peru\u2019s First Superior Criminal Court, ordered the former soldiers to serve time in prison, with sentences ranging between six and 12 years. Authorities accused them of raping the teenagers between 1984 and 1994 in the Andean community of Manta.<\/p>\n
Angulo said that the absence of constitutional guarantees in the community during the armed conflict \u201cturned the possibility of reporting sexual abuse into marginal acts and of no attention.\u201d He added that the victims lived amid social rejection that forced them \u201cto carry their claim for their violated rights in the most absolute helplessness.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe decision adopted is a message that… is aimed at respecting the fundamental rights of people even in the harshest social crises facing the nation,\u201d Angulo said.<\/p>\n
After the sentences were announced, prosecutors, who sought harsher sentences, and attorneys for the victims said they will evaluate Angulo\u2019s decision to decide whether to challenge it.<\/p>\n
The war that raged between the Peruvian military and the Shining Path communist insurgency from 1980 to 2000 left an estimated 70,000 people dead, the majority of them in rural areas.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors began looking into the teenagers\u2019 accusations in 2004 after a special commission investigating the armed conflict published a report detailing among other abuses suffered by civilians in Manta that \u201csexual violence was a persistent and daily practice\u201d for which \u201cthe members of the Army stationed in the local military bases were mainly responsible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angulo on Wednesday said the rapes sometimes occurred when the teenagers were entering their homes after being threatened with rifles, or after being detained and accused without evidence of being part of the Shining Path. One victim reported having a scar on her hip left by a soldier using a knife to cut her underwear.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n