48 violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, treating minors the same as adults is indeed a violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In that sense, if imputability means that minors are treated the same as adults, then to charge a minor as an adult and punish him accordingly would be a violation of the spirit and the letter of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Latin America, the concept of imputability has been replaced by the concept of criminal responsibility, where the violations of criminal law that juveniles commit are described in the Penal Code. In that sense, there is no juvenile crime. Paraguay has made progress in this regard; the penal consequences are different in the case of juveniles. Implementation of a law on juvenile criminal responsibility can result in measures of two kinds: those that involve deprivation of liberty and those that do not. The State has a non-transferable, exclusive monopoly on responsibility for those deprived of their liberty. i) Expert testimony of Ana Clerico-Deutsch, psychologist In clinical encounters with some of the survivors of the fires at the Center, the witness was able to observe and evaluate the young people for the psychological and emotional harm that they suffered and continue to suffer. The trauma that these children experienced was twofold: the first was the trauma of being interned in the Center where, because of conditions there, the children endured deprivation in such areas as hygiene and food, and in other things related to daily life. The children were virtually unanimous on one point: they were treated “like animals” at the Center. The emotional and psychological impact of living in conditions of that kind is severe: children feel humiliated and degraded by the way they are treated day after day. The second trauma involves the use of corporal punishment, which the children reported was excessive and arbitrary. The corporal punishment frequently amounted to torture; for the slightest reason, the children were taken to a special room where they were tortured. This is perhaps the most extreme form of mistreatment and abuse, and these children were exposed to it every day. Solitary confinement as a form of punishment for a juvenile is unthinkable, devastating, and utterly unacceptable. As a form of punishment, solitary confinement does nothing to modify the behavior being punished. The child will be no better off because of this form of cruel punishment. He is left alone with his own thoughts, his own anger, his own sense of defenselessness, powerless to do anything, simply biding time until that moment when he can “go crazy.” If children punished in that fashion never go to that extreme, it is because at some time in their lives, their mothers or fathers were able to provide them with the basic personality structure that prevented the psychotic break. Torture is “the most blatant negation of the essence of the human being […] it is the ultimate in human corruption.” Torture has long-term effects that, if not treated, can have adverse consequences on one’s mental health. Those consequences are much more severe in the case of children and adolescents, because their psyches are still very vulnerable and their personalities and defense mechanisms are still not mature enough to be able to withstand torture. Another serious consequence of torture for children is that it makes them distrustful of the adult world, and they end up holding themselves in very low regard. Some said that they sometimes had suicidal thoughts.