More about Labayru

In jail, Labayru collaborated with the authorities. With her help, two French nuns and two Plaza de Mayo mothers were kidnapped and murdered by the dictatorship. She was a very young woman who had given birth in jail, and I would never judge her for doing whatever she had to do to survive. After she was released, Labayru found herself shunned by other survivors and the families of those who died in captivity. If you did nasty things in order to survive, it’s understandable, but the reality is that you still did nasty things. Maybe a little bit of humility about that is in order. Labayru is congenitally incapable of humility, however, and has been acting in a way that has made a lot of people mad.

One example is her insistence that she was raped in jail. There was an officer among her captors who would take Labayru on dates to restaurants, hotels, and even international trips. Yes, her captivity was of the kind where she could travel to Uruguay and Brazil to have vacations with her husband. Labayru had sex with the officer who would take her to these restaurants and trips. She also had threesoms with him and his wife. The officer never physically hurt or threatened to hurt her. Moreover, Labayru enjoyed the sex. She enjoyed it so much that even today, fifty years later, she cannot stop describing how very enjoyable it was and how entitled she was to some physical enjoyment while in captivity.

One can argue that there was most definitely an element of coercion in her relationship with this officer. But the idea that this is an equivalent of forcible rape that many women actually experienced during the dictatorship does not land. Labayru managed to get the officer in question and his supervisor convicted to twenty plus years in jail for these “rapes.” She is shocked that other survivors are not flocking to her in support over this.