In the video you can clearly see Lesly’s nervousness. She sits on a sofa in jeans and a sweater, her legs tightly crossed. Her hands are restless, her eyes are anxious. A psychologist sits next to her and questions her. What the 14-year-old tells her is so horrific that it is almost unbearable.
Her stepfather had raped her regularly since she was ten. He forced her to have sex at home, in the field, in the rainforest. He threatened to kill her if Lesly told her mother about it: “I’ll throw you to the pigs.”
The video, which Stern reporters were able to view in excerpts, is considered the main evidence against her stepfather Manuel Ranoque, 33, the father of her two younger siblings Tien, 5 years old, and Cristin, 18 months old.
This is the same man who tearfully hugged the children after they were found in the jungle on day 40 of their odyssey – an image that went around the world and made the front page of Stern.
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