102 416. that: In the case of Laura Berenice Ramos, her mother testified before the Court Five months passed before they could show me my daughter’s body, and it was not a body, it was bones […] and they always told me that I should be accompanied by a doctor or a dentist, and I took them with me and we were never allowed to see the body. […] I needed to know whether my daughter was alive [or] dead [and] I needed to identify that body, so I asked the deputy prosecutor if I recognized the body would he return it to me as a birthday present, and he told me that it was very cruel, but yes. On March 20, I was able to go in and identify the bones, and they told me that I could do whatever I wanted with them.423 […] [The investigations conducted by the authorities] were useless; even though I suggested specific lines of inquiry, they never paid any attention to me; they tried to give us minimum assistance that did nothing to alleviate our anguish, everything I had to struggle with to continue investigating […]. The damage was not caused simply by my daughter’s disappearance; the whole family was damaged: my children, Claudia Ivonne and Jorge Daniel, they need a lot of psychological help, because they also lost part of their lives; […] we are no longer complete; […] I don’t need a pat on the back out of pity, I needed them to look for my daughter, for them to give me my daughter, to confirm me whether or not it was my daughter. Now I demand, […] compensate me for my life, because my life is no longer the same; this is what I ask these people who I know have the power to be able to make them pay for all the damage, everything that has been done to us.424 417. In her testimony before the Court, Esmeralda Herrera’s mother stated: The authorities have had a very bad attitude […] they never even took the time to call us, in […] eight years, to tell me how the investigations were going; […] I’ve had to find out everything from the media. […] The procedure to identify my daughter was performed four years after I had asked for an exhumation and a DNA test […]. The process was very difficult for me and my family because we had to re-experience a funeral, an exhumation; I tried to take my life several times because it had no meaning, because I could not obtain justice […]. My younger children tried to take their own life; they were interned. My daughter, who was 11 years old at that time, […] drew flyers (pesquisas) and stuck them up all round the house […] because the authorities never gave me a flyer. […] I spent many nights imagining what they did to my daughter; how they raped her, how they tortured her. It was terrible; I couldn’t sleep imagining this. Also, since I was waiting for her, I dreamed and hoped that my daughter would appear; that one day when I returned from work, they would say, just as they told me that Esmeralda had not appeared, […] here’s Esmeralda. Esmeralda has reappeared. 418. The mother of Claudia Ivette González testified before the Court that: I was greatly affected; I fell ill, my sister also fell ill, and I also had a son ill with cancer; he was very affected when we found the body; two months later […] he died;[…] [the authorities] haven’t helped me at all, they haven’t even made any progress […]. They haven’t shown any respect for us […] because they haven’t found the guilty individuals, and apply such analysis in the present case (Cf. Case of Valle Jaramillo et al. v. Colombia. supra note 49, para. 119). 423 Cf. testimony of Mrs. Monárrez at the public hearing, supra note 183. See also testimony of Benita Monárrez Salgado before the official of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Office of the Attorney General for the state of Chihuahua on July 24, 2006 (case file of attachments to the answer to the application, volume XXIX, attachment 46, folio 10046). 424 Cf. testimony of Mrs. Monárrez, supra note 183.