Mexican single mother gets jail and fine for killing her rapist in self-defence
After a hard day’s work selling french fries on her street cart in the Mexican city of Nezahualcoyotl, Roxana Ruiz was having a drink with a friend when Sinai Cruz, a man she had seen in the neighbourhood, asked to hang out with her.
He offered to walk her home and asked to stay the night, claiming that his home was too far away. She obliged, but things quickly turned south when he hit and raped her.
In self-defence, Ruiz, a single mother, strangled Cruz with a shirt she managed to get her hands on and killed him.
Her nightmare did not end on that fateful evening in May 2021.
A Mexican court on Monday judged her actions to be an “excessive use of legitimate defence”, finding her guilty of homicide and sentencing her to six years and two months in prison. The 23-year-old was also ordered to pay 285,000 peso (S$21,700) to compensate Cruz’s family.
The state court’s Judge Monica Osorio said Ruiz “could have given (Cruz) a blow to the head to defend herself and leaving him unconscious would have been enough”.
But Ruiz said: “If I had not defended myself, I would be the dead one.
“It seems that the price for not letting yourself be raped and killed in Mexico is going to jail.”
The judgment has raised outrage in Mexico, a country where an average of 10 women were killed every day in 2022, according to government data.
Of 3,754 women murdered in 2022, only a third were investigated as femicides.
Ruiz said she knew how close she came to becoming part of that statistic.
“It was my life or his,” Ruiz told El Pais on Wednesday. “I woke up and this guy was on top of me with his pants and boxers down. And well, the only thing I did was get rid of him and defend myself to get out alive.”
In a state of panic after Cruz died, Ruiz stuffed his body into a bag and abandoned it on the street outside her home. She was arrested after a neighbour called the police.
She and her lawyer Angel Carrera have vowed to appeal the judgment, and also expressed dissatisfaction at the authorities’ handling of the investigation.
Ms Carrera said the ruling could set a “bad precedent” if it is not overturned.
“It’s sending the message to women that, you know what, the law says you can defend yourself, but only to a point,” she told the Associated Press. “He raped you, but you don’t have the right to do anything.”
Ruiz has claimed that the police did not perform medical tests to support her claim that she had been raped.
Instead, an officer allegedly responded that she probably wanted to have sex with Cruz before changing her mind, perpetuating her torment by making her relive her experience.
“They did not take my statement into account so that I could defend myself. My only crime was defending myself from the man who raped me,” she wrote in a letter shared by women’s group Nos Queremos Vivas Neza, loosely translated as ‘we want each other alive’.
Ruiz told El Pais she is remorseful over her actions and revealed that Cruz’s mother has threatened her.
“I did not plan to kill this lady’s son, but I did not want to die that night either. I didn’t want to leave my son an orphan,” she said.
Pending her appeal, Ruiz remains free for now but cannot leave the State of Mexico where she lives.
Speaking to a crowd of supporters outside the court, she said her thoughts are with her five-year-old son, who was born out of a physically abusive relationship.
”My son, I hope to stay with him, to be the one who watches him grow up,” Ruiz said.
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