Claudio Contardi, the ex-husband of actor, TV host and model Julieta Prandi, has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for aggravated sexual abuse and gender violence.
The ruling, delivered on Wednesday by Oral Criminal Court No. 2 of Zárate-Campana, came five years after Prandi filed her complaint. The TV host was accompanied by her lawyers and her current partner, Emanuel Ortega, in court.
She described the ruling “peace, relief and justice” after painful decades she described as an “ordeal.”
The prosecution had sought 20 years in prison for Contardi, citing the length of the abuse and the psychological harm caused to Prandi and her children. The star’s legal team had pushed for 50 years, citing the “magnitude of the wrongdoing” and calling the crimes “harrowing” and “brutally perverse.”
In her testimony to court, Prandi described repeated assaults beginning in 2015, months after the birth of her second child. She said she was isolated from her personal and professional circles, denied access to her finances and humiliated.
“I was his wife and I had to do it. While I was asleep he would grab me by the neck, get behind me, abuse me… I wasn’t raped once, but countless times,” she told the court.
Prandi said the ordeal also traumatised their two sons, now aged 10 and 14. “They are all in therapy. None of them wants to see their father. You mention him and they have a nervous breakdown,” she said.
Speaking outside the court before the verdict, Prandi declared: “A conviction is peace, relief and justice. Contardi is a criminal. Acts must have consequences; otherwise, what we allow will be repeated.”
Contardi, who was in court for the ruling, denies all charges. “I never abused her without her consent,” he said in his defence, claiming he had been the target of a media smear campaign.
“I was in love, I married in love and had two children with her… I have always complied with the law. I am innocent,” he insisted.
Prosecutor Christian Fabio, however, argued that Contardi had “sexually abused her on repeated occasions, making threats, using physical violence, grabbing her by the neck from behind, engaging in intercourse while she resisted.”
Prandi told the court harrowing details of the abuse. “I was his wife and I had to do it. While I was asleep he would grab me by the neck, get behind me, abuse me, and when he finished, he would go out and do it over my body. Every time I remember it I feel like vomiting. I wasn’t raped once, but countless times. He told me I was a bag of milk, that I was a semen deposit,” she said during the trial.
Judges Daniel Répolo, Lucía Leiro and Mariano Aguilar ordered Contardi’s immediate detention and barred him from leaving the country until the verdict was final.
Prandi said she had requested he be remanded in custody before the trial to protect herself and her children, but the court rejected it to avoid prejudging the case.
After Wednesday’s sentence, she told reporters: “I cried from my gut; I let all my pain out. This man is capable of anything. They stole years of my life – it was an ordeal.”
Contardi’s lawyers are expected to appeal.
– TIMES/PERFIL/NA
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