The Investigation
In May 2022, a student of the International Film and Television School of San Antonio de los Baños (EICTV) contacted me to raise the alarm about different cases of sexual abuse and aggression that had taken place in that center during the last decade.
From that moment on, I began an investigation during which I had access to various testimonies from female students and professors of that institution and other documentary evidence concerning the reported facts.
The information gathered during this period gave shape to the present text, which denounces rape, sexual abuse, harassment, revictimization, and above all the mishandling of these situations by the management of the EICTV, which together was generating a toxic environment, unbearable for not a few of the female students at the School.
The research is composed of four testimonies of women of different nationalities who studied at the EICTV during the last decade, as well as the reconstruction of the unsuccessful and revictimizing process of reporting that one of them experienced before the direction of the School, in the first instance, and later before the Cuban police authorities.
At the request of the witnesses, and to protect their identities, the names used here are fictitious. This request is based on fears that these stories could affect their respective careers in the film industry, which would otherwise have precedents of global scope. Until the rise of #MeToo, US producer Harvey Weinstein benefited from his power in Hollywood to guarantee himself decades of impunity; earlier this year, the first three whistleblowers of Spanish director Carlos Vermut—”all work[ing] in positions related to the audiovisual sector”—alleged “fear of reprisals” when they asked the newspaper El País not to reveal their names.
As for the aggressors, except in one case, they are not directly identified because the investigation mainly questions the actions of the school’s management and denounces an ecosystem where, by all accounts, sexual aggression and impunity were normalized.
On the other hand, the decision to identify one of them by name responds, above all, to an express request from the victim, as well as to the fact that the individual was denounced both to the EICTV management and to the Cuban Police, which led to a criminal investigation process. Thus, the case took on a public and notorious character within the School.
Certainly, this work can also be a first step that leads to further reports and future inquiries that target figures who have accumulated some share of power within EICTV and in the film industry and have taken advantage of their position to abuse students and colleagues to varying degrees.
Regarding the process of obtaining the testimonies, in all the cases—including the third and fourth, which intersect at some point—, they were collected independently, without any agreement among the victims, whose statements coincided in describing in detail a harmful ecosystem that marked the lives of women of different generations in the School.
It should be emphasized then that the present research once again evidences the urgent need for the approval of a Comprehensive Law against Gender Violence in Cuba, a request that Cuban feminists have been insisting on for the last few years.
The School
The International Film and Television School was the main academic project of the New Latin American Cinema Foundation (FNCL), an organization created by the Latin American Filmmakers Committee to integrate the cinematographies of the region and develop the production, distribution, and exhibition of such works.
The creation of the EICTV was approved at the first meeting of the FNCL’s Superior Council, and its facilities were built on the land formerly occupied by the San Tranquilino estate, ceded by the Cuban State, in the town of San Antonio de los Baños, 35 kilometers from Havana.
The opening ceremony took place on December 15, 1986, and was presided over by the Cuban president, Fidel Castro; the Colombian writer and president of the FNCL, Gabriel García Márquez, and the man who would become its first principal, Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri.
The EICTV, considered one of the most important film schools in the world, has received important awards such as the Rossellini Prize, awarded in 1993 during the 46th edition of the Cannes Film Festival, the first time the event honored a film school.
In its classrooms, leading figures of world cinema such as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Soderbergh, Konstantinos Costa-Gavras, Emir Kusturica, Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, George Lucas, Lucrecia Martel, Abbas Kiarostami, Werner Herzog, James Benning, Mike Leigh, and performers such as Ian McKellen, Isabelle Huppert, Hanna Schygulla or Ralph Fiennes have given workshops and courses.
One of the peculiarities of the School is that its students come from all over the world, with special emphasis on Latin America, Africa, and Asia, with Cubans being only a small percentage of its students.
The limited access of Cubans to the EICTV and the fact that it is located outside the capital and operates under a residential regime mean that, despite its international prestige, it is not as well known among the island’s population as other educational centers.
It has been called the “School of the Three Worlds,” —these worlds being Asia, Africa, and Latin America—because it aspired to become a referent for the cinematography of the global south in a context dominated by the United States and Europe.
Within the School’s academic program, three modalities stand out: the workshops, which last approximately one month; the master’s degrees, which last about six months; and the regular course, which lasts three years.
From 1986 to 1991 the EICTV was directed by the Argentine filmmaker Fernando Birri; then, until 1994, it was led by the Brazilian screenwriter and filmmaker Orlando Senna, who was replaced by the Colombian screenwriter and filmmaker Lisandro Duque, who held the position until 1996.
From then until 2000, the direction of EICTV was held by Spanish-Argentine screenwriter Alberto García Ferrer, who was replaced by Venezuelan historian and filmmaker Edmundo Aray. In 2002, Cuban filmmaker Julio García Espinosa took over the post.
The next director of the School was Dominican editor and producer Tanya Valette, who held the post from 2007 to 2011 when she was relieved by Guatemalan filmmaker and producer Rafael Rosal Paz.
After Rosal Paz’s controversial departure in 2016, marked by a corruption case, Cuban filmmaker Jerónimo Labrada took over the top post at EICTV but currently serves only as academic principal since he was replaced in 2016 by the current general principal, Susana Molina, former vice president of the Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry (ICAIC).
Molina also served as “acting president” of ICAIC, between July and November 2023, following the resignation of Ramon Samada as a result of the union protest—and the emergence of an Assembly of Cuban Filmmakers—fueled by the censorship and subsequent exhibition, without the consent of the filmmaker, of the documentary Fito’s Havana.
Testimonials
Beatriz*
I arrived with such sexual immaturity that I was not prepared psychologically or emotionally for how “liberal” the School pretends to be.
The first moment I saw this lack of limits was at a party at El Rapidito[1] where a student, who had already lived at the School for a while, unbuttoned her shirt, stood with her tits out and began to rest them on a teacher’s chest.
I wondered, “If she knows what boundaries she can break and is doing this, then what is the upper limit of those boundaries?”
To everyone present that seemed like a joke, even an everyday occurrence, as they laughed and the craziest thing is that they even encouraged her even though the professor’s latent discomfort was clear. He was sitting on the stairs and leaning back more and more, but she moved with him until she was lying on top of him.
Placing his hands on his sides so as not to touch the student, the teacher said: “If my wife sees this, I am not touching her, they are forcing me ha, ha, ha.” Later, when I talked to other students, they justified what had happened by saying that since she was a lesbian, what she had done did not matter, but all I could think was: if a male student, even if in this hypothetical case he was gay, was resting his genitals on a female teacher, would we see it the same way?
Not only that, but sometimes in the back of El Rapidito people were having oral sex.
To each their own, I’m not into kink-shaming; clearly, some people like agoraphilia,[2] and I respect the preferences of others. But by this I mean: there were no limits to what you could see and hear and from there the line [of] what you could say yes and no to blurred, to such a point that the other person’s “no” was no longer acceptable. Why won’t you let them? Why won’t you be part of the game? And, above all, why won’t you want to?
I realized that people were also very interested in each other’s sex life: whether you were a virgin or not, how many you had been with, and who they were. Are they from the regular course, are they from the master’s degree, maybe a professor? Or is it, as they used to tell you, “fresh meat from the workshops.” This was mainly encouraged by the cleaning ladies, who would gossip all day long if they saw you leaving a room that wasn’t yours.
There was no privacy in our sexual sphere, but also no privacy from sexual abuse, because we all found out about everything, while the School seemed to care little or even nothing. It was better for them not to know because they clearly didn’t want to deal with it.
Many people have gone to speak to their professors and the school’s directors about situations of harassment, abuse, and rape from students to other students, from teachers to students, and even from school employees to students. But the most surprising thing is that nothing has ever been done. The craziest thing is that they just look for the “solution” that allows the school to save face while avoiding expelling, dismissing, or firing anyone.
What I emphasize the most, that I don’t forget, is that there was a girl who suffered from some mental illness that no one knew about until the situation exploded. She basically went into a crisis where she locked herself in her room, made a mountain of rotten food in the bathroom, and stole a student’s cat. It wasn’t until she had been locked in her room for a week that a teacher noticed she was skipping classes, and upon alerting the management they came looking for her. They ended up forcing the door to get her out and finally took her to a psychiatric institution.
What surprised me about all this was that the student’s mother traveled to Cuba and demanded that the board reinstate her daughter in the School. For us, this was extremely dangerous because we were not asking the School to expel her. After all, there was no reason to do it, but rather that a person in such a mental condition could not be there; mainly for her sake, but also for the sake of the rest; let us remember that she had kidnapped the cat of another female student who desperately searched for it all week.
The School answered that, since she had paid for the whole year, they could not kick her out. The truth behind this lie is: that they did not have the money she had paid to reimburse her, so they had no choice but to let her stay. Finally, after a lot of pressure from the students, she returned to her country, but at that moment I realized that this is how everything is treated at the School. If something doesn’t suit them, they won’t make any changes.
We never had a seminar on sex education, prevention, mental disorders, or diseases. One of the first things you learn doing therapy or going to a psychologist is that your psychologist cannot treat your friends or relatives because that is unethical, mainly because he or she might have multiple versions of a story, and therapy is personal.
From this, which is something that you can just google, are you trying to tell me that you have 80 people in regular courses plus I don’t know how many in workshops and master’s degrees, who come from countries completely different from Cuban socialism, and you put them to live in a forest like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, but you only have one psychologist? A woman who is listening, as if it were the five o’clock soap opera, a hundred different versions of all the experiences of each student who dares to talk to her, and on top of that while having coffee, she tells other workers about your problems as if it were a joke? Surprising but real.
The School is deficient in all its areas… And to this sum of delirious events, you have to add the sexual abuse, lack of prevention, and help for students. They are deficient in doctors, psychologists, professors, coordinators, and so on up to management.
Once a colleague of mine came down from a party and told me: “I just woke up and I had a girl on top of me fucking me.” Surprised at his story, I asked him what he was going to do and was shocked when he told me he finished fucking her. “If she was already there, what else could I do?”
I don’t know, get her off of you, go to management, say you were raped? I think a lot of men who go to the School believe that because they’re men they can’t be raped or worse, that sex can be forced. It’s very difficult to hear that when you are a person who was raped in their youth. To hear that they’re raping a lot of people, and people take it as if it’s the most normal thing in life.
The other thing I remember [is] something that happened to a girl in the master’s program who a custodian was harassing. That is, he went around looking for her, trying to talk to her, to touch her; when she was in her room, he was looking at her through the window. And she reported him and the School decided to move him to a different job. Not to fire him, but to move him to a place in the school where she would not have to run into him.
And to talk about personal experiences: a person who worked at the School tried to rape me. He was a person who liked me, but he never invited me to do anything outside the School; we always had to meet during his working hours. He would leave his work and come to my room. One night, when I was very tired, I told him that although he could come to my room, I didn’t want to have sex. He assured me we would be sleeping and nothing else so I agreed to let him in.
I repeatedly insisted that I had to sleep and that I did not want to have sex; I said it several times and his response repeatedly was, “Relax, nothing is going to happen.”
Well, hours later, I woke up in the middle of the night with him on top of me trying to put it in me. It was a moment of great suffering, and a lot of hysteria because I was reliving what happened to me in my youth, but now in my adulthood. I tried to get him off me, and, when I was finally able to push him off, I got out of bed and got a glass of water to calm myself down because I was about to have a panic attack. I turned around and said: “What are you doing?” He replied, “Why are you playing hard to get? What do you expect me to do, sleep next to you like this?”
I reminded him that I had warned him that I didn’t want to have sex, and he told me not to play hard to get, that Cuban women liked it that way. Then I asked him if he was admitting to me that he raped Cuban women, and he told me that I was exaggerating. I told him to fuck off and to go away, and he slammed the door so hard that he left a crack in the glass pane of the door.
Then I started crying and I had a panic attack. The next day was very hard because I spent it bathing as I felt dirty, I felt that I had that person’s hands all over me, covering my mouth again. It was very distressing, I tried to talk to some colleagues about it, but as he was so loved by others, they called me a liar. Others advised me not to talk about it to avoid that later I would be seen as partially responsible for being with someone who worked at the School.
I feel that in the School there is a system to make you believe that you are a child, a five-year-old who knows nothing about life and must be re-educated. An environment is created where you as an adult are not an adult just because you are a student. Then you start to believe that childish caricature that they force you to be, and if they tell you that there is something you should not do, you do not do it, because you are afraid.
When I spoke to one of the directors and asked him hypothetically what would happen in case someone was raped, the answer he gave me was that if there was no police report, they could not act in the face of a false accusation. Right then and there I said: no, I am not going to say anything; which meant that I lived with my aggressor until I graduated.
That person is still working at the school today. The last time we met, he tried to talk to me as if nothing had happened, as if we were old friends, and as if his attempted rape was a mere memory or a dream that I only had. Then I confronted him more frontally because I was about to leave and I was not so afraid. I told him that if he spoke to me again, I would break a bottle of rum over his head; he laughed as if it were a joke. He still does not accept what he did and his response continues to be: “That’s the way Cuban women like it.”
Teresa*
I arrived at EICTV on September 9, 2019, when the course started.
The guy was from my class. We arrived before the majority of our classmates and became very close friends. The first week and a half, we were a very small group; then the regular course started to arrive. At first, this guy was very cool with me and another girl, but then he started to take it too far.
The first thing he did was that I was sitting in one of the hammocks we have at the School, I was wearing shorts, and he began to pinch my ass almost under my pants. I was a little paralyzed, and he justified himself by saying it was a joke. A friend who was sitting next to me said, “Dude, I’ve seen it from the outside and it’s not cool, he groped you.”
That same night we went to El Rapidito and he was there talking to some people. He came to us with a whole bottle of water and poured it on me. Another day we were in class and I had left my cigarettes behind; he said he would go with me to get them and I said no; he insisted a lot, but I kept saying no. When I started walking, he came after me. All that the first week.
On Thursday of that same week, we were all eating in the dining room and there was no room at my table, although others were empty. He grabbed a chair and put it almost on top of mine, and there another guy told him that he was going a little overboard with me, and asked me if I felt comfortable with that situation. I said no, but I was a little paralyzed. Then I got the courage and told this guy to talk to me alone.
I told him that we were in the first week, that I didn’t want to fuck up the good feeling in the class, and that I didn’t want it to end badly, but if he continued like that we were going to end badly. I even blamed myself a little bit, which now makes me even angrier, because I said that maybe I was smiling a lot and I could have confused him, but I didn’t feel comfortable with that situation. He acknowledged it and asked me for forgiveness. He told me he liked me, and I insisted I didn’t.
After that conversation, I thought it would be better to leave it at that and keep it friendly.
That night a group of friends at school got drunk. Late in the afternoon, we went to a place where there were tables, and I, since I was in bad shape, lay down in a deckchair and fell asleep.
The next day I didn’t remember shit, but then I started to remember. At some point in the night, I noticed a rattling and thought that since I had fallen asleep next to my friends, they were taking me to my room. Next thing I knew I woke up in a room and I had the guy next to me. He was totally glued to me, hugging me, I could feel everything. My first thought was: did I fuck this guy while drunk?
When I recover some of my senses, I realized I was dressed; I calmed down a bit, and ran out of his room.
You see if we woke up and he was doing his thing and I was doing mine, I would have thought that nothing happened, as I have slept a thousand times with friends, but he was in his T-shirt, in his underwear, hugging me. That same day I told him I didn’t want anything to do with him, and the next thing I knew he grabbed me drunk from a chair and put me on his bed, when in the School there are two beds in every room, plus he could have taken me to my room which was on the next floor.
On my way out I ran into two boys from my class and as soon as I saw them, I started to cry. They asked me what was wrong and I couldn’t stop crying. The whole School knew how this guy was behaving with me, he had thrown a water bottle at me in front of everyone, and also, though not as much as me, he was harassing two other girls.
These friends started telling me that I was to blame and questioned why was I getting drunk. I started to think: was it my fault? In the end, I went up to my room threw myself on the bed, and started crying.
There were two other girls living in my apartment, and one of them heard me and asked me what was wrong. I didn’t even want to tell her. At first, I told her I didn’t know why I was crying, but she asked me to go outside and tell her. That’s when my other roommate came out. I told them with a lot of fear because I thought they were going to react like the others, but they immediately told me: “What a son of a bitch. I knew he was going to do that at some point.” They asked me if he had fucked me and I told them I didn’t remember anything but I had my clothes on when I got up, so I didn’t believe it. I felt supported by them so I told them what the other guys had told me. They said, “Don’t pay attention. Have you ever picked up a guy you like and taken him drunk into your bed? And that on the same day you told him you didn’t want anything to do with him.”
We went downstairs and met two other girls, and one of them asked me: “Where did you sleep?” Then I started crying again. I told her I had woken up in that guy’s bed and she told me that she asked because another friend had told her the night before they saw this guy take me and they were worried.
When I got to the dining room, I found the friends I had been drinking with the night before and, when they saw me, they came up to me worried and told me that the night before, when I fell asleep on the deckchair, this guy came and said that he was taking me, that I was not well and could not stay there.
Why didn’t they stop him? Apparently, since they were from the group that came later and had just met me, they didn’t know how friendly or not I was with this guy, and he told them that I was getting cold, that I couldn’t remain there, and that he would take me to my room because he knew where it was. So, they were very concerned, but they didn’t stop him.
They confirmed to me the seriousness of what happened to me because since he took me, they noticed it was very strange. Then I told them everything that had happened to me with him, that my classmates knew about it, but they did not. Then I started crying again.
I don’t know if the principal knew about my case, but I know that another girl who was harassed by him did tell her. But it’s the same as always; it seems that there has to be an aggression and they leave you half dead for the School to take it seriously.
Around that time there was a very nice moment of sorority, but also because it had happened to several people. In a few days, many cases took place and we supported each other to denounce it.
Several people from my class sided with him. They said it happened because of my behavior, because I am sociable, because I smile to people, because I am a woman. The people who sided with him hurt me a lot because they made me feel guilty.
They also said that we didn’t fuck, so there was no aggression, and that I only got into bed with him. But I didn’t get into bed with him either, much less after everything that had happened. Do you think I’m going to get into bed with a guy who has been harassing me for six days? They said I had gone with him, but those who were present knew I was drunk and asleep. What I decided when I was drunk was to go with my group of friends to a place, and what I found was that someone pulled me out of the situation I had chosen, took me without my consent in his arms, and took me to his bed. And then he got close to me and hugged me, knowing that I did not want to sleep with him or want anything to do with him because I had told him so only a few hours earlier.
As time went by, many people began to judge me in that “Big Brother” style so typical of the School, and the new arrivals gave me odd looks. It happened that, since everyone there knew about everything, they heard about me before meeting me and they had already judged me. I noticed it and I had a terrible time with that situation. A friend of mine, with whom I came from Madrid, called me a “slut.”
The professors also found out. One of them said in a class that rumors had reached him that a girl in the group had had an issue with another boy. I didn’t say anything because I was too embarrassed in front of the whole class.
Some of my female classmates suggested that I make a short film telling what had happened to me and when we gave it to the teacher for review, he asked again if it had happened to anyone in the class and I didn’t say it had happened to me either. I was sick of everyone knowing about it, because, although I felt supported, I also suffered a lot of judgments from people.
As you feel people are going to judge you, you prefer not to tell. It’s also scary to be labeled.
Elena*
I arrived at the Film School in September 2018. I always felt a bit of an outsider at the School, where most of my classmates talked about cinema and philosophy as if we all had had the same education. Some were even criticized for not knowing English. Especially in Polyvalency, where we “leveled” our knowledge, there were quite elitist dynamics where the strongest was the one who had more cultural capital to express his ideas.
The parties were the moments of socialization in which we were more or less all equal. Moments when there were no people who had seen more French cinema or auteur films than others.
I soon began to notice dynamics within the parties that, deep down, were the very ecosystem of the School at work. Many professors mix with their students from overly personal spaces, approach, and accost the students not to chat and get to know them professionally, as I expected. I found it awkward for teachers to approach and flirt so openly. Certainly, no one questioned it, and I eventually began to find it even normal.
It happened to me in the first workshop I took. In an assessment of the project I was developing for the class, the professor told me that I looked like his ex-wife and that he felt like fucking me. I remember laughing uncomfortably and not knowing how to react. He began to tell me about a character in a movie he was developing, how the character performed erotically, and how I reminded him of her. That’s what my counseling was about. We didn’t talk about my project.
I realized at one of the parties that he was dating one of my classmates. I had already been told that he was on the prowl and that he flirted with everyone. At some point, I questioned his behavior because it was extremely uncomfortable to have a teacher behaving like that. He would tease me about it and reply that he liked me too. One day he was in the cafeteria talking with a classmate of mine. I sat with them because he called me, and while we were talking, he told my classmate that at some point he was going to fuck me; then he looked at my buddy, who was gay, and said “and also you,” pretending it was a joke.
A couple of months later, in screenwriting classes, another professor explained how screenwriters had to adapt to any changes directors could make. He gave us as an example how he was working on a film where the director had decided to select an actress who was older than the protagonist in the script, so his request to the director was to make sure the actress looked “good enough to rape.” So, verbatim: “Make sure the actress you selected looks good enough to rape. That’s all that matters.”
When the class was over my classmates came up to ask him questions about the script, as if nothing had happened. I asked two of my female close friends to go with me to talk to the professor. We told him that we didn’t think what he said was right, that we thought it was disrespectful, and [that] it was inconceivable that a professor was reproducing that level of violence. I also told him that instead of questioning victims of sexual violence and demeaning women for how they looked, he needed to worry about the content he was teaching, which was quite misogynistic. He replied that I had misunderstood everything and that what he was saying was that she had to look pretty.
I got angry and went to talk to María Julia Grillo, the School’s academic coordinator. I told her everything and explained how degrading and dangerous it was to make that kind of comment as a teacher. She told me that he had already gone to talk to her, that I was exaggerating, and that I should not take it personally. There was never any self-criticism or acknowledgment that we were right to be upset. No one questioned the level of violence of what the teacher had said; at least not as an institution. In the next class, he apologized; he said that he had not meant it and that it was up to us to turn over a new leaf. For me and other female classmates to continue taking his class was a bit difficult. As a result, I began to be seen as “problematic” in the school.
A professor from that same chair invited me to his department for lunch to talk about my projects. While we were talking, before we started to eat, he touched my nipple. I remember that moment perfectly because the guy didn’t let go of it even when I interrupted what we were talking about. He said: “Come on, take the t-shirt off,” and in shock I told him that under no circumstances I did like him or want anything from him. Then I pulled away and put some distance between us. He stood up and pulled down his pants. I told him he was crazy and that I was leaving because he was disrespecting me. I never denounced anything because he has a lot of power at the School, in the media, and even in my country. What I have done, is to discuss it with colleagues there in the School and here, in my country. And those who have studied or worked with him always tell me that this guy, historically, has gone beyond the limits with the students, even openly. To a classmate, as soon as he met her, he told her in front of other classmates: “You are the perfect woman, of legal age, but with a girl’s body”. He was her specialty professor at the time.
Many people told us that these things were to be expected, that this was Cuba, but I feel that an international school that identifies itself as a revolutionary, progressive, anti-scholastic school, “the school of all worlds,” cannot be any of that if it is that violent. No institution, under any circumstance, should justify violence through social contexts because schools are educational spaces that must be safe.
There were men harassing girls at all the parties constantly. Also, people from outside the School would stare at the girls and take the drunk ones to their room. In the end, what we had to do was take care of each other and watch out for these guys so they couldn’t prey on the drunk ones. We talked about it many times and it was very normalized. What we were looking for were alternatives so we could protect each other.
In 2019, Lucia’s story happened. I knew her story not because she told me, but because her female colleagues told me. I talked to those colleagues and told them that they should not be the ones telling everyone what had happened. That was re-victimizing Lucía. If she had not authorized it, they should not talk about it openly in the school. It was too personal, and it was not appropriate that I, who did not know her at that time, should be hearing about it from them. The girls told her to talk to me. When we talked, I told her that it was important that she told the people at the School. Specifically, to María Julia Grillo, the academic coordinator.
Because of her case and others, we knew about Ayrton Paul. I went with another female colleague to talk to María Julia Grillo. She told us that we should have spoken to her before, because they could have thrown him out or warned him, but in the case of Lucía she said that they had to investigate the situation, and they could not throw him out because at that time she had not decided to report him to the police.
I explained to María Julia that the School could not wait for the victim to report because sometimes it takes years to do it and that the School could not wash its hands of the situation because it already knew what had happened.
Then I found out what they did was to sit Lucía, Ayrton Paul, and a female classmate who had gone to denounce on her behalf in an office, with part of the management team, to tell them what had happened. They literally sat the victim with her rapist and forced her to testify in front of him and a team with no expertise in the matter. This is an absurd level of revictimization and violation.
Then, at the School, what happened was that the aggressor was grumbling in the corridors, and his friends were consoling him. After that I stopped talking to them—or they stopped talking to me—because I was “the snitch,” the one who wanted him to be thrown out of the School. He was always surrounded by friends and faculty who supported him.
I had several meetings with the management about this issue because I was concerned about how they were dealing with it. Lucía was doing the best she could to be at the School, because she deserved to be there, and at the School, everything was handled as gossip. Every time the subject came up, someone tried to change the conversation. Always. It was not a subject that could be discussed openly. They claimed it was better not to talk about it so as not to create a bad atmosphere.
Maria Julia Grillo even stopped saying good morning to me for a while. Until the last day of my stay, I had problems with my classmates and the academic staff because of this issue. The aggressor declared in front of the management and his friends that he had raped Lucía; however, no one ever did enough to protect her so that she could finish her course without being revictimized. But—even when he was in custody during our graduation—,[3] many people jumped, chanted, and applauded his name, as if he had been a hero. Even the day after our graduation, at the thesis screenings in Havana, Ayrton Paul attended… And in the presence of Susana Molina, who proudly posed with him while his friends presented him with the diploma he had not been able to receive the day before.
Luckily nothing as serious as Lucía’s happened to me, but it was luck. The lack of protocols leaves people there vulnerable. I had several uncomfortable or violent encounters with teachers and students, which might not have happened if there were regulations and education in this regard. I did not report what happened to me because I understand the level of re-victimization that exists. To become responsible for starting a huge process, to deal with the criticism and judgments of many people, to repeat the story twenty thousand times. The process is horrifying, and to denounce is really heartbreaking.
Cuba is a particularly macho country, where men are used to harassing and abusing without any or little responsibility in this regard—not so different from almost all of Latin America, or even the audiovisual industry—; I know that it is not only a dynamic of the School, but it is up to them to take charge and tackle these historical dynamics of that space.
I had a terrible time there; a place, on the other hand, that is very kind to those who adapt and do not make waves. I only stayed because the quality of the center would allow me to get the jobs I wanted.
Lucia*
In March 2019 I arrived at the EICTV to take part in a workshop, and the truth is that I really liked it, I had a great time, and I learned a lot. And then in September 2019, I returned for another Acting Direction workshop.
On that occasion, the course coincided with my birthday, and just that day, being in El Rapidito with some friends celebrating, sitting at a table, two boys and a girl came and sat at the table to talk to us.
One of the guys started talking to me, flirting. He asked me to go to his room and I said yes, but I told him that I didn’t have condoms and that without a condom I don’t have sex. He told me to relax, that he had them in his room.
So, we went to his room, we were there, and when it was time to put on the condom, I saw that he did not put it on, so I insisted; but when it was time to penetrate me, he took it off without me noticing. Fortunately, I was attentive and always stopped him. I am very suspicious about these things; I don’t have sex without a condom.
After several attempts and trying to avoid a confrontation, I told him that I had a boyfriend and regretted going to his room, so I asked him to forget about it there and told him I was leaving.
Right now, obviously, I wouldn’t use that excuse. I would say, “You fucker, go fuck yourself.” But at 22 I still didn’t have it in me to tell him to fuck off. He told me he understood me and that he also had a girlfriend, so he proposed that we just slept together. I accepted. I have slept with many people who have never raped me.
At that time, there were bedbugs in the mattress in the apartment where I lived at the School, and bedbug bites give me an allergic reaction that prevents me from sleeping, so, in his room, which didn’t have any bedbugs, I fell asleep in a second.
I woke up because I felt something inside my body, and that’s when I saw that he was penetrating me.
When my body reacted, because I was paralyzed for I don’t know how long, which at that moment felt like forever, I kicked him. He fell backward. I went to the bathroom to pee because I was so disgusted, and when I put my clothes back on, and luckily I was wearing overalls and sandals, very easy to put on, I saw all the condoms lying on the floor.
I was shocked and he grabbed me by the left arm, I remember it perfectly, and said: “A little more.” I had to hit his arm with my right arm and told him that was the end of it.
Then I left. When I was going down the stairs, I heard him open the door—it was about three or four in the morning—and I turned around in fear that he would come or grab me from behind, but he didn’t come out. I went to my apartment at the School and called my roommate because I was having a bad anxiety attack, I was having a bad time, and I told her what had happened to me.
I slept for about an hour and went to class. When I got to class, I met another classmate from the workshop and told him what had happened; he suggested that I should tell the teacher. So, I told my teacher, who really, I think, out of support and understanding, told me: “Let’s see how to handle this, because in this country they may end up blaming you.”
At one point, I decided to talk to María Julia Grillo, the academic coordinator. I told her that I really liked the School and that later on I wanted to study in the regular course because inwardly I had decided that no matter how much that guy was a rapist, he was not going to stop me from receiving an education; also believing the School was something else because then you get to know it better and realize you don’t want to study in a misogynist place.
I went to talk to María Julia and told her everything, that I wanted to study there, even though I had had this experience, and wanted her to know because I didn’t know if I was the first but in case they didn’t know anything, I didn’t want another person to be raped.
María Julia told me “What a pity,” because she had a good opinion of the aggressor’s mother, whom she knew, and then she told me that she was going to talk to Jerónimo Labrada, who is like the deputy director of the School and head of the Chair of Sound, which is where the person who assaulted me studied.
The next day my aggressor, Ayrton Paul, came to apologize, but I told him that I did not accept the apology and that this was a violation. “You are a rapist and you raped me,” I told him, and that he was very lucky because if we were somewhere else, he would already be in jail.
The next day my roommate took the liberty, which I didn’t think was right either, but considering everything that happened it was the right thing to do, to call the school administration and file a complaint on my behalf. She reported the rape and added other complaints related to the School’s facilities that I never mentioned.
When they called me to talk to me about this, there was Susana Molina, who is in charge of the School; Jerónimo Labrada, who is the academic director; the teacher of my workshop; the coordinator of Workshops, and my aggressor. I arrived at the office and he was sitting there with them. On the table, there was some food and tea, and he was drinking his tea with cookies.
Then I told them that I didn’t know why they were meeting me with this being in front of me, but if they wanted me to say that he was a rapist in front of him, I would do it. Then I looked him in the eyes and told him: “You are a rapist because you raped me”; to which he nodded in agreement.
His classmates also went to talk to him, and he told them that he had not wanted to do it, but [that] he was very drunk and it happened without a condom. If I say that he raped me and he says this, well, that’s the end of the story. In short, the only measure the school management took was that we had to go to the psychologist.
I went to the psychologist so that they would not say that I wasn’t complying, that I did not try to do what they ordered, but before that María Julia Grillo called me to her office and showed me a sheet of paper on which was written what was considered rape in Cuba. Then she told me that my case was considered rape because I was asleep, something like “defenseless”; she told me that if I wanted, I could report it, but she did not introduce me to the legal advisor—I found out later that the School had one— nor did she tell me where the police station was or offer to go with me. She only said that, if I wanted to, I could file a complaint.
The psychologist, on the other hand, told me when I went to her office that there were people at the School who wanted me to be the standard bearer of feminism there. But the best thing to do was not to denounce. I said yes to everything, but in reality, I was thinking about why she was telling me that, or if she was a psychologist, a psychoanalyst, or a fortune teller.
I didn’t really denounce it because at that time I had just one more week in Cuba, and I didn’t want to sour that time because I know what a judicial process is like when you are a woman and you denounce a rape, in my country or any other. It is a very hard process where you are questioned and re-victimized a lot. I did not want to go through that during my last week there; besides, it does not last a week, and I had to go back to my country, where I was studying and working.
In the end, I went to talk to María Julia one day and told her that I would not go to the police, and she told me that she already knew. Then I asked her how she knew and she told me she had intuited it.
In the end, I went back to Spain, and some time later I took the entrance exam for the regular course and they told me that I had been accepted.
In September 2020, Ayrton Paul sent me a message on Facebook apologizing and asking to have as pleasant a coexistence as possible the year we were going to coincide in the School. I don’t know how he knew I would get in. I thought it was ridiculous that he wrote to me because I have never had him on any social network, and I felt very bad that he looked me up on Facebook and wrote to me when I told him not to approach me or talk to me again.
It seems surreal to me. I remember he wrote on September 6 and I did not reply, but it was the confirmation that he was still in the School; because I had a little hope that he had been expelled.
On September 18 in the morning, I woke up really angry and needing to write back to him. I told him that we women do not have to forgive being raped as if we were angry just because, and we are talking about a criminal offense, that he did what he did, that he acknowledged it, and he should end up in jail.
The course started around May 31, 2021, if I remember correctly. I flew to Cuba on May 13 and he arrived about two or three weeks later. It was a very uncomfortable situation. Luckily, I was never alone at any time, but it obviously affected me.
Things happened like being with a friend in Plaza Zá[4] and having him sit at the next table. It seems obvious to me that you don’t have the right to share the same spaces where I am when you have raped me, and if you regret it so much you should respect that person’s space and privacy.
At the beginning of December, when the article in El Estornudo denouncing Fernando Bécquer was published, I saw that several girls on social networks dared to share similar experiences,[5] and that prompted me to make a post denouncing what I was going through because I was still being re-victimized at the School.
I made my post public and several people began to share it, and comment on it. They tagged Susana Molina in the comments; then she called me to talk to me. She did not ask me to delete the post, but I got the impression that was her intention. In the meeting, we also discussed the anti-bullying protocol they wanted to implement; she was looking for my support and to stop my criticism of the School.
Some time later it was brought to my attention that the School’s management was questioning my private life, and apart from questioning my private life, they were saying they had not done anything because I had not claimed that my aggressor was a rapist. So, I took advantage of that moment and I said “Madam, at all times I said this was rape and I will not allow you to continue saying that I never said that, everyone knows that I have always said it.” If I had only said it to them or I would have kept quiet but I had told everyone.
Then the principal told me that they needed my help to carry out the protocol against gender violence, to which I replied they should start by expelling the rapist and that that year in the school there had been two other rapes, as far as I knew, and they had not found out, and neither had the people who carry out the protocol, but I had found out. She reacted by complaining because students did not tell her anything, and I answered that they had not done anything with what happened to me, so the other victims did not feel safe to denounce their experiences.
After that came March 8, 2022, when a group of students from the school put up posters saying: “Accepting to live with a rapist is also violence,” among other things.
As a result of that, they called a friend of mine to a meeting where Susana Molina, María Julia Grillo, and the school’s legal advisor were present. There, they began to say they had never done anything because I had not gone to the police to report it. It was always my fault.
When I found out they had said that in the meeting I got angry and sent a WhatsApp message to the principal. It was Friday, and I told her: “Mrs. Susana Molina, on Monday afternoon we could meet to talk, you, María Julia Grillo, and the school’s legal advisor.” She never replied, and on Monday, I don’t know what time in the afternoon, they sent some people to look for me and tell me the principal wanted to talk to me. I explained to them I had sent her a message and she had not answered me, that she should tell me directly.
She answered me directly, and we met on Thursday. I also called two teachers who were in charge of the anti-harassment protocol and two witnesses to whom my aggressor confessed what he had done, and apart from that I notified several friends of mine from the school that I was going to do this, and that if I had to go to the police to denounce it, I would do it.
When we met, I asked why María Julia Grillo was not there, and Susana Molina let slip that María Julia was tired of these things.
At the beginning of the meeting, I said it was a pity that she was tired of all this because I was even more tired and was still there. It was also a pity because she was the first person I told everything to, and wanting to look the other way said a lot about her, but it was okay because I was not going to stop saying what I had to say.
Then I began to say that I was tired of having my private life questioned, that they were questioning what I did or did not do after a rape; I asked them to question what they did as a school, and that, if they were so concerned about me not going to the police, why they never deigned to introduce me to the legal advisor to guide me through the process.
I don’t remember very well. I know that there were some moments when we kind of argued. At that point, I was very tired of everything and was very clear that I was going to say everything I thought, and then let the others speak. The meeting ended with the decision that they were going to expel him, and I told them that if they expelled him, they should not give him the degree; to which the principal told me they had to give it to him because he had completed his studies. But I argued that he shouldn’t have had the chance because two and a half years ago he raped me and confessed it, and [that] they should have expelled him then and there. I also told them that if they were so sorry and wanted to start making the right decisions, what they should do was not give him that degree.
When I left the meeting many students from the school showed me their support, it was very nice, and from there I went to the police station to report it. At the police that day it went well; they treated me well, except that they did not give me the statement of the complaint, something they said later it was normal in Cuba. I had to go back about three times to get it until they finally gave it to me written on the back of an ETECSA invoice.
I believe that the female investigator in the case handled everything quite quickly because that same day she went to the school to see the facilities and the next day she went to take the testimony of the witnesses and the aggressor.
The following Monday, while I was at the School, several people began to tell me that a School worker named Lázaro was looking for me. When I found him, he told me I had to go to the police station to testify and that a car was waiting for me. A colleague offered to accompany me.
The one who took us in the car was the head of the School Security. There was also the legal advisor and an assistant of some sorts she had.
When we arrived at the police station, the investigator of the case told me that they could expel my aggressor from the country so he would not graduate, but without going to court. I agreed, believing she was saying that based on what they had investigated. Then she told me to wait for a lawyer who would come to sign that.
When the lawyer arrived, she asked me to tell her what happened, and while I was telling her, a man arrived talking on the phone and asking everyone to leave; I was left alone with the investigator and the lawyer, and this new man, who introduced himself as the prosecutor of the case. Then the lawyer began to tell the prosecutor, belittling and omitting information I had told her. That’s when I realized she was my aggressor’s lawyer.
Then the prosecutor asked me to repeat my testimony to him, but he kept interrupting me to go out and talk on the phone. There was a moment when I asked him to stop going in and out, and, as he had previously told me to turn off my phone, I asked him to stop looking at his phone while I was talking, which seemed to me to be very disrespectful. In addition, I also had to ask him not to shout at me, because we were talking about a personal matter of mine, about something that affected me, and all the people outside didn’t need to know about my private life. Then he told me that was his tone of voice, and I asked him to change it when he talked to me.
There was a moment when the lawyer told me that it was obvious that I had never slept next to a Cuban man, and I said to her: “I am very sorry for you, but I have slept next to several Cuban men and I have never been raped.” Then they started talking about 7-11 cases in front of me; I don’t know if they did it to intimidate me, but it seemed very unprofessional. They said that the statement of the boys who had said that Ayrton Paul had confessed to them that he had raped me was not valid.
Now I also remember that when I went to the police to file the complaint, they made me go to the doctor for a check-up, and, of course, everything was fine because it had happened two years before. I remember that the doctor asked me if I was sure that I had been raped.
Going back to the day of the prosecutor, they said that the medical examination did not show any vaginal tearing; to which I replied that they had done it two years after the rape, and that, besides, after being raped there does not to be a vaginal tearing, not even a scratch or a drop of blood. For there to be a rape there only has to be broken consent.
At that moment I showed them some screenshots of the message he had sent me apologizing, which implied he had done something to me, and there his lawyer said to me: “Ah, well, but he apologized to you.” The prosecutor had to tell her that I was right.
The investigator gave me the statement, written from their point of view, where things were missing, such as that he had grabbed me by the arm; but it did say that I had told him: “Stop, this is it.” I read the statement to see how misogynistic it seemed to me as I was already convinced that I would not sign it, and I said that I would not sign anything that came out of a place like that and that I hoped the next time they had to deal with gender violence they would educate themselves better about gender and sexuality because they had a long way to go.
I got up and left. Actually, I don’t know how I found the strength for all that. The prosecutor, on the other hand, told me the decision to expel the rapist from the school was not judicial, but administrative. So, I went and called one of the women in charge of the anti-harassment protocol and told her that I had been told it was the School’s decision. They told me that they would expel him no matter what.
I also felt very little support from the Spanish Consulate because before filing the complaint I spoke with the girls from YoSíTeCreo in Cuba and they told me there was a support number [for] gender violence against Spanish women. I called and, although initially they provided some guidance, when I told them I had filed the complaint, their response was very vague. I felt abandoned. Neither the school, nor the prosecutor’s office, nor the Cuban government, nor the government of my country cared. Then I became afraid because I felt very lonely and decided to withdraw the complaint; after all, the school had already decided to expel him.
When I went to withdraw the complaint, they told me that I could not because it was a criminal offense and they had to continue the investigation. Then they called me back to interrogate me; the investigator came with questions from the prosecutor’s office, and it was really a very uncomfortable situation because she came to the School and I said I did not understand why I had to continue answering questions when I wanted to withdraw the complaint and forget everything about this process because I was really having an awful time. She told me she had the petition to withdraw the complaint in the file, and she showed it to me, but when I saw it, it was not the petition that I had written but one with a logo of the EICTV, and she explained to me that that was a different one and that the one I had handed in was surely in the Prosecutor’s Office. I finally agreed to answer the questions but said I would not do it in the future unless I had a lawyer present, as I never had that option.
Among the questions she asked me was how long the aggressor had penetrated me; to which I laughed and told her that it was a very stupid question: first, because if a guy penetrates for one minute it is as much rape as if the penetration lasts for 30 minutes and, second, because when you are being raped you are not looking at the clock, you are only focused on surviving.
In that case, she agreed with me and before leaving she told me that if I wanted to leave the country, I had to notify her. I called the Spanish Consulate, but they ignored me. My mother had to file a complaint from Spain so that they would attend to me, and then they called me from the Consulate and told me that I had no problem if I decided to leave, but I had to notify the police.
In any case, in a meeting with the teachers of the School, it was unanimously decided to expel Ayrton Paul, information that was made public. But finally, I do not know what changed their minds because, although he did not return to the School, they allowed him to graduate and take his degree.
I flew back to Spain on April 12 or 13, 2022, and on the 27th was his graduation. He did not go, but they gave his degree to his classmates, who went on stage, celebrated, and danced without caring that he was a rapist.
It seemed to me that the most serious thing was that the School, which said to be very regretful, allowed that space of violence within a gala. The next day, or two days later, there was a screening of all the films from that graduation at the Riviera Cinema, and he showed up there with his suit, his mother, and the flag of his country, and had his picture taken with his friends and the director of the School.
She says she didn’t realize he was there, but I have a video of her telling him: “You are already a graduate.”
These behaviors have been accepted among the students in the School because they have become part of the culture of the center, and that same impunity the School transmits when faced with these behaviors is also transmitted by the students, because you get there and are there for a month, and you learn how it works. That on Fridays you’re going to fuck, and if you don’t fuck it’s because you’re an idiot, which is a super toxic idea.
Besides the rape, I was really affected by the treatment from the prosecutor’s office and the School itself. While I was in Cuba, I just kept moving forward, but when I got home to Spain, I realized I didn’t have to experience or tolerate that.
I have always traveled alone and now I am afraid. I’m afraid because of everything I’ve been through. I live with anxiety, any little thing upsets me, but little by little. And it wasn’t just the rape; it was the whole process I went through. I was at home for a month and couldn’t get out of bed.
The Process
December 9, 2021
After reading the article in El Estornudo and receiving messages during these months about how well I seem to be doing in Cuba, I have decided to write and not keep quiet. I am well, yes, but I could be in the shit, the thing is that thanks to the education I have received from my dear mother I know that no one deserves to feel the merit that they have sunk my life.
In September 2019, exactly on the night of my birthday, September 18, a student of the EICTV raped me. I was a workshop student at the time and was only going to be in the school for a couple of weeks, but I wanted to come back to enroll in the regular course and was afraid to denounce him. (Besides we all know that a judicial process is not resolved in a week, which was what I had left in Cuba).
Even so, I talked it over with the School authorities, who asked the three typical macho and misogynistic questions: “Were you drunk?” “How were you dressed?” “Why did you go to his room?” while they didn’t ask him anything. And I know this because the protocol exercised by that institution was to sit me in front of him at a table. To sit me in front of my rapist.
Right now, I’m in the first year and he’s in the third year. And the attitude not only of the School but also of some of my classmates is: you can’t complain if, before coming here, you already knew he was here. A pretty poor excuse that shows a lack of knowledge about human rights, obviously. “Are we going to annul the educational progress of the woman and enhance that of the rapist?” With me, that’s never going to happen.
Before starting the course, he virtually harassed me again, and when I came to Cuba, I felt harassed by him. The individual in question is still studying, eating breakfast, lunch, dinner, and sleeping in the same place where I live.
And I don’t write this as a scornful denunciation, nor for wanting to complicate things or get anyone in trouble, I have already healed and worked this out, I am simply writing it because just as this man was free to rape me, I am also free to write.
And it is good to write because you never know who will read you and feel accompanied.
Besides, this case is only a minuscule and absurd case of the kind of gender violence that is experienced in Cuba, at the moment I realized what had just happened, and I had psychological and family support in my country, a privilege that many Cuban girls, adolescents, and women, unfortunately, do not have.
Thank you.
Lucia wrote this post on her social networks on December 9, 2021. Among the comments on Facebook is one from Susana Molina, director of EICTV, who wrote: “Only yes is yes. Thank you for your solidarity.”
That same day, in the afternoon, Susana Molina summoned Lucía for a meeting in her office, where other teachers and a female classmate were present. The meeting began with Molina telling the student that she had read her Facebook post, although she assured that she was not calling her for that reason but to ask for her help to develop a protocol against gender violence in the School since they did not have one.
During the meeting, Molina acknowledged the inability of the School’s management to handle cases of sexual aggression and said she knew that they needed to re-educate themselves, both the school’s management and the rest of the community to learn how to handle these issues they had never faced before.
Lucía, for her part, was unwilling to work on the protocol against gender violence because the School still refused to punish her aggressor. She explained she felt questioned by the management and refused to file a complaint with the police, claiming that, three years ago, when the incident took place, she did not feel supported. She also said that financially and mentally she was not in a position to initiate this process alone and claimed that the responsibility for reporting this aggression should not fall on her alone, but also on the School’s management.
A teacher who was present insisted that they were not lawyers or psychologists so they were not prepared to react appropriately to this type of problem, and added that the School entered into a contradiction, since, if Lucia did not go to the Police to report it, the School would not have any proof of the crime.
Molina said that, in September 2018, when she learned of the assault on Lucía, she thought she understood that Lucía did not want anything to be done against the aggressor, even though she acknowledged that, when she summoned Lucía to a meeting with the School’s management, the student repeated several times that Ayrton Paul had raped her. She also questioned why she did not notify her directly, to which Lucía replied that she notified María Julia Grillo, the academic coordinator.
Lucía explained that the School was not a place where female students felt safe because sexual abuse had occurred and the management had done nothing about it. That was exactly why no one went to the management to denounce these aggressions.
The meeting, which initially was supposed to deal with the creation of a protocol against gender violence in the School, ended up focusing on the student’s complaints about the way her case was handled.
Molina said she did not know that it was wrong to summon Lucía and her aggressor together to a meeting and that both she and Jerónimo Labrada and María Julia Grillo did not show leniency to the aggressor, but summoned him to several meetings where they scolded him while he did not stop crying.
Lucía alleged that, despite this, her aggressor was still in school and was going to finish his studies and receive a degree with which he could get a job in many places, which was not fair. She said that she could have been one of the many girls who had gone to do a workshop or a master’s degree at the School, had been raped, and so had given up on finishing the course and getting the degree.
The meeting lasted about an hour and a half. Molina focused on trying to get Lucía to join the gender team, but the student continued to be reticent and unhappy with the measures taken against her aggressor.
Finally, Molina asked those present to make some posters against gender violence and for the responsible consumption of alcohol for the school’s anniversary party on December 15. She also demanded that these not be like the posters against gender violence previously put up by students, with messages such as “Ni una menos” (Not one [woman] less), as she regretted that every time visitors came to the school they asked if any students had been killed or beaten there.
She said that she preferred to make educational posters because, once people die, nothing can be done.
March 14, 2022
A few days after March 8, following a new complaint related to sexual assault, Molina, Grillo, and Labrada participated in a meeting with other professors, the legal advisor, and a female student active in feminist issues within the community, apparently to inquire about it.
Although Lucía was not present, her case soon came up. Molina and Grillo insisted that she had not wanted to file a complaint; they said that in several meetings Lucía had refused to file a complaint with the police.
Labrada said that the only thing the School asked was that, if Lucía was making this accusation, then she should inform the authorities because she was putting the community in doubt.
After a long discussion about the response to sexual assaults, the student present at the meeting reproached that they had sat Lucia face-to-face with her aggressor. Grillo claimed that there was no other option because another student, who was not Lucía, went to report the incident to the administration.
The student present at the occasion, who was in the same year that Lucía’s aggressor, said that she might not go to her graduation ceremony because she did not want to share space with a rapist and that if she stayed, she would carry a sign protesting his presence. This did not sit well with Grillo, who in turn pointed out that the aggressor’s mother would be at the graduation and did not deserve that, then, taking offense, she announced that the one who would not go to the ceremony would be her, and that she would tell the aggressor to advise her mother not to go either.
Grillo repeated throughout the meeting that she would not go to the graduation; she did not want to be part of “that show.” She also said that the aggression suffered by Lucía should have been resolved by other means and that, instead, what the students were doing was attacking the School.
Susana Molina insisted that, if the victim did not report it to the police, the School would fall into a trap since nothing could be done. On the other hand, she acknowledged this time that it was her mistake to have brought Lucía and her aggressor face-to-face in the office because she wanted to hear both sides.
At one point, the female student recounted that at a film forum in Latin America, they were talking about gender violence in the sector and that someone mentioned the School in the conversation. This outraged Grillo, who said she did not believe these allegations and then criticized the fact that it was the female students who had not warned the School’s management about Ayrton Paul’s behavior, which, she said, would have prevented the aggression against Lucía.
The student, to illustrate the atmosphere then prevailing at the School, said that a professor had offered her a threesome with his wife and that another professor said that, although he earned much more money in other jobs, he went to teach every year at the EICTV because he could sleep with any student he wanted.
María Julia Grillo stressed that she did not believe the allegations and said that the worst thing was the girls had kept quiet about these things for years.
The student said those were different times, that ten years ago perhaps things would not have been understood the way they were now.
Grillo said she would not allow things like those to be claimed about the School and called the girls’ silence hypocritical.
Molina was concerned that the denunciations would affect the prestige of the School and conjectured that, if the reality were as the student said, then the presence of many foreign professors was paid for with the prostitution of the students.
Grillo said that no one had reported anything before, and that, if things like this had been reported, the aggressor would have been expelled from the School. She also considered that what was happening at the time was defamation and slander of the institution.
March 24, 2022
Lucía, upon learning that the meeting retold above had taken place, and that her case had been discussed at length, asked Molina for a meeting with her, Grillo, and the School’s legal advisor.
Grillo did not attend on that occasion. Lucía insisted in turn that she come, but Molina was evasive. Lucía was very emphatic about the importance of the presence of the academic coordinator since she was the one to whom she initially made her complaint. In addition, she wanted to clarify several things; among them, her decision not to report to the Police when the rape occurred in September 2019.
Determined to make a report to the Police that same day, Lucía said that there were two students outside who could testify that her assailant acknowledged raping her. She also questioned the fact that she was never informed that the School had a legal advisor and that she was not offered help in that regard when she reported her rape in 2019.
On this occasion, she asked for help from the institution to support her in the process of the complaint, as she could not bear to live with her aggressor for much longer. She regretted that, almost three years after what happened, the School still did not take sides in favor of the victim, and insisted that she requested the expulsion of her aggressor. She added that, if the School did not support her in the complaint process, she would take it forward alone.
Susana Molina explained why her case had been discussed at the previous meeting and again indicated that she had been asked to file a complaint from the beginning, but she had said at the time that she did not want to.
For her part, Lucía recalled that, even though she did not file a complaint with the police then, in the meeting the management of the EICTV had summoned to have a face-to-face with her aggressor, she did say on several occasions that he had raped her and that she did not understand why he was sitting in front of her.
She also mentioned that, a few days after telling Grillo what had happened, the academic coordinator herself confirmed that more students had been harassed by the same person, and acknowledged that what had happened was considered rape in Cuba, so if she wanted to, she could report him to the police. To this, she had replied at that moment that she would think about it.
Lucía told in this meeting that she went to see the school psychologist, as Molina had suggested the day of the face-to-face meeting, and that the specialist, far from encouraging her to file a complaint, told her that some students wanted to use her as a standard-bearer of feminism. In any case, the student admitted that, despite the psychologist’s advice, her reason for not filing the complaint was that she had seven days left in Cuba, and in that span of time the matter could not be resolved.
She insisted that she was made fully responsible for reporting the aggressor and for any proceedings before the Police. After three years, and looking at the facts with hindsight, Lucía said that she could assert that in 2019 there was no real support from the School, and, instead, she had continued to be questioned about her actions after being raped.
Finally, she emphasized once again that she was there to ask that her aggressor be expelled and to demand that people stop talking about her case in those terms, as she was not going to allow them to keep questioning her for not having made the complaint to the Police.
Molina replied that, if she had wanted, they would have accompanied her to the Police in 2019, although she recalled that this could imply that Lucía could not leave Cuba and that it would not be a short process, during which, perhaps, the accused could return to his country, so it was not clear to her where the process would finally be carried out. She also said that Lucía might have to hire international lawyers in Cuba.
Lucía interrupted to say that if she had to hire lawyers, she would do so, but she felt it was unbelievable having to go to trial with international lawyers for the School to expel the aggressor. Molina said that once she presented the complaint, they would follow up on everything.
Lucía answered that she would bring the complaint the next day, but repeated that the aggressor should be expelled. Molina said the school would carry out the process. The student demanded that the expulsion should take place before graduation. Susana Molina replied that her aggressor was entitled to the degree because he had graduated, he had taken all the evaluations and even finished his thesis.
The debate between Lucía and Susana Molina became tense here, to the point where the general director of the EICTV told the student that she felt very questioned and would not allow it. She said she was not to blame for what happened, nor for the fact that Lucía had not reported it, but that she would still accompany her to the Police and offer Lucía her support. She acknowledged she had never been in such a situation, so she was not prepared to handle such matters. And she apologized saying she had not acted in bad faith as she would not do that to a young woman, who was thousands of miles away from her home.
At this point, other people intervened in an attempt to calm things down.
Finally, Molina recapped: they would go to the police and, in the following week, they would take action against the student. She promised they would do everything possible to help Lucía overcome the situation. She again clarified that she understood that in the first meetings the student had said she had been raped, but that she did not want to denounce the perpetrator. In fact, she admitted she had learned, with this case, that victims sometimes need time to denounce. She again acknowledged the mistake of sitting Lucía next to her attacker.
March 28, 2022
Susana Molina convened a meeting regarding the creation of a protocol against gender violence. She acknowledged then that the School had not been prepared, nor had it been proactive, in assessing issues related to gender violence, and that this led to the students’ claims. Then, in his personal capacity, she said she had been slow to act due to a lack of knowledge of these issues.
She then announced that such a protocol would be developed to prevent gender violence, and told those present that, for this purpose, all their suggestions would be taken into account.
* * *
Lucía returned home to Spain at the end of the course and decided not to continue her studies at the EICTV.
Ayrton Paul remained in Cuba until graduation, and although he could not attend the ceremony by order of the School, his degree was publicly presented to a group of his friends, who danced on the stage while several students in the audience protested about it.
A few days later, he attended the screening of the final works of his graduation at the Cine Riviera, in Havana’s Vedado. At the end of the gala, he was photographed with the director of the EICTV, Susana Molina.
Although in several internal communications of the EICTV there was mention of a “Protocol against Gender Violence” created in 2022, it was not until November 8, 2023, that the protocol was formally approved. Two days later, on November 10, it was announced the creation of a Welfare Office “to attend to conflicts or problems related to gender issues, work relations, etc.”
Notes:
*The names in the article are not the real names of the witnesses, who preferred to keep their identities confidential.
**With more than sufficient advance notice, the authorities and other individuals mentioned in the text were contacted by the author through official and/or personal channels. In this way, they were clearly informed about the content of the investigation, and space was offered, in the feature itself, for them to tell their versions of the facts or to reply as they saw fit. No response was received.
[1] A kind of coffee shop located inside the EICTV where students usually meet.
[2] Uncontrollable impulse that leads to the practice of sex in public or open places.
[3] In 2022, Lucía filed a complaint with the police and her aggressor was transferred to a property owned by the School in another municipality.
[4] Plaza located inside the EICTV.
[5] This is a journalistic investigation in which five Cuban women—and others later—denounce having been sexually assaulted by the troubadour Fernando Bécquer.
