BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – Viviam Perrone inscribes every act and gesture with the memory of her son, Kevin Sedano, who died at age 14 in 2002 after a car hit him in Buenos Aires, Argentina’s capital. Since then, Perrone has dedicated her life to helping people who have suffered similar losses to overcome their pain and to seek justice.
In 2004, Perrone founded the Asociación Madres del Dolor with six other mothers whose children also had died as a result of criminal acts such as traffic accidents. The group supports families in similar situations with the justice and healing processes, advocates for legal measures to prevent traffic fatalities, and works to ensure officials and citizens make road safety issues a priority.
The slender Perrone, who serves as secretary of the organization, sits at its headquarters in front of a poster bearing the group’s logo. The logo features a woman with a child in her arms inside a large heart that is broken, separating the pair. On the opposite wall, victims’ portraits form a tragic collage.
Perrone’s son had been running from a street gang when a speeding car struck him in Buenos Aires, according to a sentencing document written by the judges assigned to the case. Witnesses said the driver, Eduardo Sukiassian, had left the scene of the accident. Sukiassian denied the charge. The court convicted him of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced him to three years in prison.
Under Argentine law, a person sentenced to three years or fewer in prison must serve at least eight months, says Graciela Liliana Cortiñas, a legal adviser with Argentina’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The inmate can go free after those eight months if he or she has complied with the prison rules.
Sukiassian served 74 days in prison and then spent six months under house arrest, Cortiñas says. Adding the two together, he served the minimum prison sentence of eight months, as the country’s penal code requires.
But Perrone believes he should have served his entire term – and in prison, not at home – she says. She spent years fighting for justice for her son – frequenting the courts, tracking the case’s progress, asking her lawyer to file appeals, organizing marches and appearing in the media.
“Nothing is fair when they kill your child,” she says. “But if the law says that the person who hit him must be imprisoned for three years, it is three. If it says that it is six, it is six years, not six months or two months. We want them to finish their sentences, nothing more.”
After 10 years of fighting, Perrone decided in 2012 not to take her legal battle against Sukiassian any further, though she remains disappointed with the case’s outcome, she says.
“I do not have the desire to continue going in circles anymore,” she says. “I feel that they pulled my leg. I told him: ‘Forgive me, Kevin. Here is as far as I got with the lawsuit. From now on, I will dedicate myself to helping other families.’”
Although the number of traffic accidents has declined slightly in Argentina, it is still higher than in most countries in the region. Traffic safety advocate groups, such as Asociación Madres del Dolor, are promoting law adherence and enforcement, justice, awareness and prevention.
These groups also have proposed legislative changes to increase penalties in order to discourage traffic crimes. One house of Congress passed a measure in 2011, but the other still has not voted on it.
Traffic accidents killed an average of 21 people each day in Argentina in 2012, according to an organization called Luchemos por la Vida, which means “let’s fight for life.” The organization, which bases its figures on police and municipal data, calculates that traffic accidents killed 7,485 people in Argentina in 2012, a modest decline since 2010 when such accidents claimed 7,659 lives.
Argentina ranked fourth in Latin America for the highest number of vehicle-related deaths per 100,000 residents in 2011, according to the Observatorio Iberoamericano de Seguridad Vial, a group comprising several Ibero-American countries that works to improve road safety.
Argentina also has a much higher traffic-related death rate than some North American and European countries of similar size or population, according to Luchemos por la Vida. Using 2008 figures and internationally accepted methods for calculating traffic deaths, the organization found there were 1,066 deaths per 1 million vehicles in Argentina. In contrast, the U.S. reported 186 deaths per 1 million vehicles, and Spain reported 123 fatalities per 1 million vehicles.
Various organizations are drawing attention to traffic safety in Argentina in order to reduce these accidents and fatalities.
Asociación Madres del Dolor emphasizes the importance of supporting victims’ families and giving them legal help as they seek justice, Perrone says. The group also regularly organizes public marches demanding accountability for victims’ deaths. The mothers assert that the strengthened enforcement of traffic laws and penalties for offenders could prevent many automobile accidents.
The mothers who founded the organization met one another in the courts during the legal proceedings following the deaths of their children or at marches where they demanded justice, Perrone says. They became friends through sharing their pain.
“We got together to cry or to laugh together,” she says. “We were advising one another about what to do with the kids’ rooms, whether to dismantle them or not, what to do with their clothing. In those things, only another mother can understand you.”
The friends went on to form the association to extend this support to other families, Perrone says.
Killing a person with a vehicle – whether through negligence, inexperience or imprudence – is punishable with between six months and five years of prison under Argentina’s penal code, Cortiñas says.
But after losing a loved one, many families do not know how to begin to file charges or which evidence they should insist authorities gather, Perrone says.
“It is fundamental to be able to provide help to the family members,” she says. “Because once the incidents occur, they are very lost.”
The mothers regularly visit courthouses to try to advance criminal cases on behalf of other families. To do so, the groups’ members draw on their own experiences as well as the advice of a lawyer who specializes in transit accident cases.
“To help the families with their criminal lawsuits,” Perrone says, “the first objective that we have is to seek that justice is served.”
In addition to seeking justice, Asociación Madres del Dolor also promotes prevention, Perrone says. The group gives talks to student groups and to future traffic control agents and police in which it shares statistics on road fatalities and discusses how to prevent these accidents.
If citizens observed traffic laws – such as those regulating the speed limit, seat belt and helmet use, pedestrian crossing and alcohol limits – they could prevent many accidents, Perrone says.
Luis Silveira, a lawyer and the president of Luchemos por la Vida, agrees. Officials also do not adequately enforce the laws, he says.
“There are things that Luchemos por la Vida cannot do that are unique and exclusive to the state, such as monitoring and applying sanctions,” he says.
But others say that current sanctions and the application of them are fair.
In the case involving Perrone’s son, Sukiassian’s lawyer, Germán González Campaña, maintains that his client fully served his sentence.
“Sukiassian spent two months in a common prison and then six months under house arrest,” he says in a telephone interview. “House arrest means that the prisoner cannot leave his house, that he must ask permission and hope that it is granted if he needs to leave the house for some reason, such as, for example, to go to the doctor. And once a day, the police can come by at any time to confirm that he is still there.”
In his opinion, it would be absurd not to take into account Sukiassian’s house arrest as part of his time served.
“It does not make sense that if he was given house arrest, then later that time of imprisonment is not taken into account,” González says. “As if he were not in prison? Where was he, then, for those six months?”
The National Road Safety Agency did not respond to several interview requests.
The agency did publish a press release on its website in August 2013 stating that the number of checkpoints had increased by 97 percent since the same period in 2012. The release attributed this achievement to the incorporation of new patrols, staff and technology.
In response to this increase, the World Bank recognized Argentina in 2013 for its fight against traffic accidents.
But even if the number of accidents has decreased slightly in recent years, it is not enough, Silveira says. He calls for legal changes in order to achieve more lasting change.
His organization is pushing lawmakers from diverse political parties to include crimes against traffic safety in Argentina’s penal code. These crimes would include infractions such as driving with more than double the legal blood alcohol level, driving more that 40 kilometers (25 miles) above the speed limit and driving without registration.
The organization proposes that because of these infractions’ severity, offenders should incur prison time rather than a fine, which is the current penalty. Paying for such crimes with prison time instead of money would indicate the seriousness with which society views such crimes, even if they have not caused deaths or injuries, Silveira says.
Asociación Madres del Dolor is also pushing for legal reforms. The group has proposed legislation that would make speeding, drunk driving, or leaving the scene of an accident in which a person was injured as aggravating factors that would each add a year more to the driver’s prison sentence in the case of conviction.
Current law considers being under the influence of alcohol at the time of an accident an extenuating circumstance, Silveira says. The rationale is that the driver is not in full control of his or her faculties. As such, it may lessen the punishment rather than increase it.
Similarly, abandoning a victim at the scene of a car crash can qualify as a side effect of a violent emotion, such as shock, under current law, Silveira says. This means the driver is unable to exercise reason, which may also reduce penalties.
The legislation proposed by Asociación Madres del Dolor passed in one of the houses of Congress in 2011, but the other house never voted on it, Perrone says. Her group continues to push for a vote on the proposal.
For Perrone, pushing for legal reforms and supporting families is a way to channel hurt into something positive. It is also a way to execute the Asociación Madres del Dolor motto: “From pain to action.”
“Losing our children, the pain was immense,” she says, “but we thought that we had to act somehow. First, it was for our children. But later, we realized that we had acquired a lot of experience from our lawsuits that we could offer to other families.”
GPJ translated this article from Spanish.