Andrea Noel, Reporter Attacked In Mexico, Leaves Country After Multiple Rape, Death Threats

What could’ve been a great initial movement for women in Mexico to stand up for their right to defend themselves and to finally obtain justice for all rape and femicide victims in the country, turned out to be just another inconclusive and unpunished nightmare.

Freelance reporter Andrea Noel announced she was returning to the U.S. after Mexican authorities deliberately neglected her case. “I left #Mexico a few days ago. I’m in the US now. Thanks for supporting what I’ve had to say. Keep fighting for a less violent reality in MX,” Noel wrote on her Twitter page a few days ago.

Before her departure, the American journalist gave a few interviews where she confessed she was living in fear, and didn’t feel like the police was paying enough attention to the constants hate comments, rape and death threats she was receiving on social media.

“My biggest concern, aside from the fact that I want to find the guy who did this, is the thousands of death and rape threats that I keep getting every second; things are getting out of control, and there’s people posting my location on the Internet, I have people coming to my house, I had to call the police at 9pm one day and leave. These are the kind of things that make you think, well, maybe they’ll win and I’ll just shut up,” the young woman said to Sin Embargo.

On Wednesday, Noel announced via Facebook that her “life in Mexico was over for now” and that she was “not going back.”

She added that the main reason behind her actions, besides finding the guy who assaulted her in the the streets of La Condesa, was to “ask for justice for the more than 3 million women who have been victims of sexual violence since 2011, the more than 1,400 women who are assaulted, beaten, raped, or murdered every day in the country, the fact that 2015 was the most violent year on record for journalists in Mexico, and the reality that violence against women in Mexico/LatAm is a cultural problem that is systemic and unlikely to improve.”

According to statistics provided by TSJ (Tribunal Superior de Justicia), 738 attackers received jail sentences for sex crimes in the last four years. That means that only 19% of the suspects were legally punished. Security and Justice specialists agree on the fact that there’s a lack of commitment on behalf of Governmental functionaries, who seem to have fallen into bad habits and are not taking the necessary measures to solve these crimes.