9 26. The Court finds it appropriate to recall that, based on the probative elements presented to the Court, it found that the rape of Mrs. Fernández Ortega by a soldier in the presence of two other soldiers had been proved. Among other matters, this entailed a violation of her personal integrity, constituting an act of torture in the terms of Article 5(2) of the American Convention and Article 2 of the Inter-American Convention to Prevent and Punish Torture. The Court highlighted that “the fact of whether it was one or several State agents who raped Mrs. Fernández Ortega is not relevant” in order to determine the international responsibility of the State, and recalled “that it is not incumbent on the Court to determine individual responsibilities […], the determination of which falls under the jurisdiction of the domestic criminal courts, but rather to examine the facts brought before it and to evaluate them in the exercise of its contentious jurisdiction in accordance with the evidence presented by the parties.” 27. The Inter-American Court arrived at this conclusion based, inter alia, on the following elements: (a) the victim’s testimony; (b) the military presence in the area on the day of the facts; (c) the official expert assessment of the sperm bioscopy and the acid phosphate analysis; (d) the psychological evaluation of Mrs. Fernández Ortega; (e) the testimony of the victim’s daughter who was present on the day of the events; (f) the testimony of other witnesses who were present shortly after the rape and assisted the victim, and (g) the fact that, more than eight years after the attack, the State has not offered any evidence that would contradict that it occurred. The Court indicated that the State could not justify itself exclusively based on ignorance of whether the violation had occurred and its authorship when this was a result of its own errors or irregularities by destroying evidence in its custody. 8 To conclude otherwise would entail allowing the State to hide behind the negligence and ineffectiveness of the criminal investigation to evade its responsibility for violating the right recognized in Article 5 of the American Convention. 28. Additionally, the Court found that the State was internationally responsible for violating Mrs. Fernández Ortega’s rights to judicial guarantees and judicial protection established in Articles 8(1) and 25(1) of the Convention, in relation to Articles 1(1) and 2 thereof. Furthermore, the Court found that the State had failed to comply with the obligation established in Article 7(b) of the Inter-American Convention for the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence against Women to the detriment of the victim. In addition to the facts recognized by the State,9 the Court has 8 The Court established in the judgment that “the samples taken from the victim were inexplicably used up or thrown away by the experts, preventing other tests from being carried out; some of them of fundamental importance, for example, DNA.” In this regard, the State acknowledged: […] before the Court, the destruction of the gynecological evidence owing to the lack of diligence in handling it. The poor technical handling of the evidence by the experts in charge, added to an error in its chain of custody, resulted in its destruction […]. This involuntary error, resulting from a lack of skill and technical capacity of the personnel of the local Attorney General, as well as the impact of this fact on the subsequent development of the investigations, are circumstances that the State has acknowledged fully, even in 2003, when the National Human Rights Commission ruled on the loss of this evidence. […] The Mexican State acknowledges the lack of skill that resulted in the loss of the evidence as well as the consequences that this loss has had on the development of the investigations. 9 The State acknowledged its international responsibility in relation to the following facts: the delay in providing medical care; the lack of specialized medical personnel in the agency of the Public Prosecution