Bolivian state politician Domingo Alcibia Rivera was allegedly caught on camera raping an unconscious woman on the floor of the provincial Assembly of Chuquisaca.
The security video, uploaded to YouTube -- be warned, it is disturbing -- shows an unconscious woman get placed on a chair in an empty room. A man, identified by local media as Alcibia Rivera, then enters the room and cuts the lights.
Through the blurry images, it appears that he then removes the woman from the chair and rapes her on the floor. When the lights turn back on -- apparently because someone tried to enter the room -- the man hops up and the woman appears to move. The lights then turn back off and the man appears to pull up his pants and return the woman to a chair.
People return to the room to check on the woman. Toward the end of the video, when she tries to stand up, she falls to the floor.
The video was reportedly taken on Dec. 20, after a holiday party at which Rivera and others allegedly drank too much. After being posted on YouTube, local news stations ran with the story this week, and it later appeared on international news sites including Spain’s ABC and the U.S. blog Jezebel.
Alcibia Rivera, who belongs to the governing Movement Toward Socialism (MAS, in Spanish) denies wrongdoing and says he’ll cooperate with an investigation, according to Bolivian daily La Razón.
“They’re saying that is was rape, but that wasn’t rape,” Alcibia Rivera said, according to La Razón.
MAS’s ethics committee kicked Alcibia out of the party, along with legislator Javier Humana, who was involved in the incident. The allegations drew condemnation from Bolivian President Evo Morales, who said Alcibia Rivera had committed a “serious error.”
Bolivian prosecutors say they’ll take action against local media for showing the video, saying it endangers the victim.
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