On 14 February 1972 Hilda Gutiérrez Sánchez, described in judicial records as an “older housewife” living on a state-managed farm in rural Chile, charged a 25-year-old agricultural worker, Juan Pérez Hernández, of attempting to rape her while she was harvesting beans. She told the court that Pérez had passed under the barbed wire separating their places of work and sexually propositioned her while four of his male coworkers watched. She said that, although she had replied that she was a married woman, Pérez threw her to the ground and began ripping her clothes. Gutiérrez claimed she prevented the rape by screaming, at which point all of the men fled, but not before Pérez hit her and menaced, “You’re lucky I don’t have a knife!”1 All four of Juan Pérez’s coworkers testified that Hilda Gutiérrez was lying. Despite their contradictory accounts (two men reported that she was not even working...

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