PRI Claims Running a Prostitution Network at the Party Offices Is a 'Personal Matter' Dolia Estevez - Forbes
go to original May 23, 2014

Cesar Camacho and Cuauhtémoc Gutiérrez (Guillermo Perea/Cuartoscuro)

Cuauhtémoc Gutiérrez de la Torre was not only running Mexico’s ruling PRI political party in the nation’s capitol, he was also running a secret network of prostitutes at the party’s premises until he was publicly exposed last month by Noticias MVS, Mexico’s City’s top-rated morning radio newscast.

But while the PRI leadership “temporarily” suspended him from his duties, Gutiérrez remains a member of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s party. When I asked Cesar Camacho, the PRI’s powerful National Chairman, why he has not been expelled, he answered: “Cuauhtémoc’s criminal behavior is his personal behavior; it is not the PRI’s business.” He brushed off any negative effects the scandal has had on the PRI’s reputation. “It seems to me that the Cuauhtémoc issue is for Cuauhtémoc to fix,” he told me while visiting Washington on Tuesday.

While it is not uncommon for politicians to divorce morality from politics, it’s nevertheless mind-boggling to hear Camacho described his colleague’s alleged illegal behavior as a private matter. At first glance, the case is all but a private matter. There is evidence that he used and abused his position and the party’s funds and infrastructure to sexually exploit vulnerable women during working hours. “In the U.S., if this happened, the political party would be facing a multi-million dollar suit,” Martina Vandenberg, Chairman of the New York-based Human Trafficking Pro Bono Legal Center, told me. “The allegations indicate a sexual harassment on steroids. I never have seen anything like this in the U.S.,” added Vandenberg, who has spent nearly two decades fighting human trafficking, forced labor, rape as a war crime, and violence against women. She opined that Gutierrez’s case “confirms everyone’s worse fears about corruption and abuse of power.” As per Camacho’s assertion, Vandenberg said that if the women were on the PRI’s payroll, “Then it is not a personal matter.”

Reached by phone, Amber Trzinski, an attorney at U.S. law firm Outten & Golden LLP and co-chair of the firm’s Sexual Harassment Practice Group, agreed on the seriousness of the case. “If the allegations are true, this would certainly be a case of sexual harassment, in addition to other types of claims. In the civil system, the standard for a sexual harassment claim is severe or pervasive and here, it seems to me, these facts would easily meet both of those standards. The law suit would then be against the employer.”

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