- 77 - role that doctors and other health care professionals have in safeguarding personal integrity and preventing torture and other ill-treatment.305 Particularly in cases such as this one, the evidence obtained as a result of the medical examination plays a crucial role in investigations.306 207. The Court notes that the doctors who attended the women victims in this case treated them in a denigrating and stereotypical manner, which was particularly serious, owing to their position of authority, the failure to comply with their care duties, and the complicity they revealed by refusing to record the injuries suffered, but even more importantly, owing to the special situation of vulnerability of the women, bearing in mind that they had been victims of sexual torture inflicted by police agents and, in many case, these doctors were the first person to whom they tried to report the violations that had been committed. Moreover, owing to their refusal to examine the women and record their injuries, they significantly jeopardized the subsequent investigations, as explained below (paras. 274 and ff.). This Court finds that the treatment received from the doctors constituted an additional element of the sexual violence and discrimination to which the victims were subjected. B.2.e Conclusion 208. Based on the foregoing, the Court considers that the treatment to which the women were subjected by the doctors who attended them was not only denigrating and stereotypical, but also formed part of the sexual violence of which they were victims. 209. Additionally, it concludes that the eleven women victims in this case were subjected to torture and sexual violence, including rape in the case of the seven women referred to above. The Court also finds that the severity of the sexual violence in this case was increased because this especially reprehensible and discriminatory form of violence was used by state agents as a form of control of public order to humiliate, inhibit and impose their domination over a sector of the civilian population that the police, far from protecting, treated as an enemy that had to be crushed, without caring whether, to this end, they used the women detained as just one more tool in their public order strategy. B.3 Gender-based discrimination and verbal violence based on discriminatory female stereotypes 210. Article 1(1) of the Convention is a general rule whose content extends to all the provisions of the treaty and it establishes the obligation of the States Parties to respect and to ensure the free and full exercise of the rights and freedoms, recognized therein “without any discrimination.” In other words, whatsoever its origin or the form it assumes, any treatment that may be considered discriminatory with regard to the exercise of any of the rights recognized in the Convention is, per Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Juan E. Méndez, A/HRC/31/57, January 5, 2016, paras. 5 and 9. Cf. Case of Tibi v. Ecuador. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of September 7, 2004. Series C No. 114, paras. 152 to 156, and Case of V.R.P., V.P.C. et al. v. Nicaragua. Preliminary objections, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of March 8, 2018. Series C No. 350, paras. 174 to 177. 305 Cf. ECHR, Korobov v. Ukraine, No. 39598/03, Judgment of July 21, 2011, para. 69, Salmanoğlu and Polattaş v. Turkey, No. 15828/03, Judgment of March 7, 2009, para. 79, and Case of J. v. Peru. Preliminary objection, merits, reparations and costs. Judgment of November 27, 2013. Series C No. 275, para. 333. 306