57 impunity of the case. The Commission requested that the Court find that the State failed in its obligation to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish violence against women, contained in Article 7 of the Convention of Belém do Pará. Furthermore, the Commission asked the Court to declare that “the absence of an impartial [and diligent] investigation of torture, and the continuing impunity of those responsible, constitute a failure to comply with the obligations established in Articles 1, 6, and 8 of the [Convention Against Torture].” 170. The representatives affirmed that the State did not allow effective access to justice in conditions that ensured equal protection to Mrs. Rosendo Cantu, given that her particular condition was not considered. They argued that “there was a complete unawareness of the medical institutions regarding the treatment of a woman victim of sexual violence”: i) on February 18, 2002, the doctor of the Caxitepec clinic refused to examine the victim due to fear to soldiers and because he lacked the necessary equipment, and he sent her to the General Hospital of Ayutla without giving notice of the circumstances in which he had received her and the reasons for which he sent her to the Hospital; ii) the [female] doctor which examined her at the General Hospital of Ayutla on February 26, 2002, “did not possess the necessary expertise to carry out an examination with those characteristics,” and her “medical note [only] referred [to] a ‘trauma to the abdomen’”; iii) on March 12, 2002, Mrs. Rosendo Cantú, accompanied by officials of the Human Rights Commission of the state of Guerrero and the National Human Rights Commission, was attended at the General Hospital of Ayutla. The [female] doctor requested examinations but these were not carried out “for lack of reagents”; iv) after the filing of the complaint, Mrs. Rosendo Cantú was not examined by a female forensic physician, because the Common Public Prosecutor’s Office did not “have a female forensic physician, and […] the only doctor they had was not [available] at the time”; v) at the request of the Public Prosecutor’s Office to carry out a gynecological examination of Mrs. Rosendo Cantú, the General Office of Expert Services of the Office of the Attorney General of Justice of the state of Guerrero “responded that it did not have personnel specialized in [g]ynecology” and that the examination would be carried out in the city of Chilpancingo; vi) the corresponding examinations for a victim of sexual violence were realized on March 19, 2002, by a “male forensic physician,” which “did not find evidence of rape, rather of visible external physical aggression that remained,” and vii) the examinations carried out by the victim were not administered by competent professionals, they did not respect the international standards on the matter, and were incomplete. In this regard, the State did not seek the administration of a psychological examination to establish the existence of sexual torture, did not carry out the essential examinations required in cases of rape against women, and did not “offer the victim the minimum guarantees for the treatment of a child victim of violence.” The representatives also indicated the series of omissions of the State in the investigation that “translated into the failure to carry out a serious, complete, and effective investigation of the facts”: i) the authorities did not initiate the investigation of the rape for the offense of torture, taking into account the particularities of the case, nor the international standards for the investigation of that type of violation; ii) the Common Public Prosecutor’s Office made serious errors when receiving the victim’s statement; the statement was not received by competent personnel with experience in dealing with victims, who were aware of the context and would be sensitive to the complainant; no interpreter translator was provided, and no questions were asked to direct the testimony so as to obtain the relevant information to clarify the facts, and iii) the authorities did not collect or adequately and diligently protect evidence that was fundamental for the investigation. Based on the abovementioned, the representatives affirmed that the State had violated Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention. 171. Regarding the obligation to punish violence against women, the representatives argued that the State had failed to comply with Article 7(b) of the Convention of Belém do Pará by failing to ensure the rights of Mrs. Rosendo Cantú, because it had not conducted a serious and effective investigation into the incident of which she was a victim. Finally, based on the same facts, in addition to the codification of the crime of