40 tied their feet and hung them upside down, and threatened them in that way; they would leave them there like that all night. On the subject of discipline, one guard told her that “if there are 50 inmates in a cell and one does something wrong, I punish all 50.” She hopes for the justice she was unable to get in her country. Having lost her own son, the witness wants justice for “all the youth who are still alive today.” The children who survived need “someone to listen to them, because many never have visitors; many have no one [who goes] to see them, no one to keep their cases moving. There are mothers who […] abandon their children.” She wants “justice; the law observed.” c) Testimony of Teofista Domínguez Riveros, mother of Sergio David Poletti Domínguez, deceased former inmate at the Center The witness is a nurse’s aide and has six children. She was the mother of Sergio David Poletti Domínguez, who was about to turn 16. One day the police called in her son to be present for an “inquiry” at the police station. From there he was taken directly to the Center, where he remained from March 1999 to February 11, 2000, when the fire occurred. Her son was incarcerated without ever having been convicted of anything, and was innocent. He had a private attorney who defended him prior to his death and even after. Sergio David was an “office boy” for the National Post Office in Asunción. He was a good boy. Every time he was paid, he brought his sister gifts, because she was the one who did his washing. After having been such a good boy, the correctional center turned him into “a brute.” On February 11, 2000 she turned on the television before going to work and the first thing she saw was the fire at the Center. She went directly there, and was told that her son was at the Burns Center. When she arrived at the Burns Center, no mothers had been let in; but she managed to get in because she was dressed in her nursing whites and no one knew that she was Sergio David’s mother. There were a number of boys in one room; around six young people were in another smaller room, and it was there that she found her son. He did not have oxygen, “he had nothing […], he was begging for something for the pain,” as were all the others. The “boys were vomiting ashes” and were all asking for water. She thought all her son’s teeth had been burned, so that she checked his mouth. It was black, so she cleaned it. No one asked her who she was because they assumed she was a volunteer. She asked one doctor how her son was doing, but no one told her anything. She began speaking with all the boys, or they spoke to her. Sergio David was conscious until a few hours before he died. She was able to speak with him. One guard entered the room where the wounded were and one inmate said to him: “Get out! What do you want now? Maybe you want to kill us all here? You didn’t get the job done there, so you’ve come to kill us here.” She spoke to the boy in Guaraní and told him that the guard wasn’t to blame, and asked him why he had treated him that way. Her son and six other boys in the room who were conscious told her that the fire was caused by a prison guard who spilled something and it caught fire. They also told her that they had begged for help, pleaded for them to open the gate; the guards just kept saying: “Shut up, stop yelling or we’ll