Overview
- Federal authorities took over the case to investigate it as presumed human trafficking after limited progress in the provincial courts.
- Police rescued the 23-year-old woman, identified as A.Y., and her baby from a locked room where she showed visible facial injuries, and she is now in a protected residence supported by Fundación Volviendo a Casa.
- Her formal complaint describes repeated beatings, sexual assault during pregnancy, forced drug use, confinement with the only key controlled by the accused, passport confiscation, and the depletion of her savings and credit.
- Salta’s Subsecretaría de las Mujeres has intervened since October, coordinating with the Japanese consulate, civil registry, migration office, and social services, and it submitted a report urging prosecutors to order the suspect’s arrest.
- The accused, identified as M.L., remains at liberty as prosecutors prepare a formal detention request, and the probe will scrutinize how he persuaded her to relocate from Japan to Argentina.