A third woman denounced former president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize winner Óscar Arias Sánchez of sexual harassment. This complaint joins the one raised on Monday by a psychiatrist named Arce and a second complaint by journalist “Nono Antillón”.
The also journalist Emma Daly, who worked for the Tico Times and Reuters news agency during the 1990s frequently covered Óscar Arias during his first presidential term (1986-1990). She assured the Washington Post that in 1990, when Arias was president, he groped her while she was covering the news. According to the reporter, she was in the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel in Managua. She approached the then president to ask a question and, instead of answering, he ran his hands over her breasts and said “you are not wearing a brassiere.” The woman said she was shocked and nervous after the incident and could only think “I am wearing it!”
Daly remembers she did not think about making a formal complaint because
that was the usual behavior in Central America. We just accepted it. It was like being treated like that was part of territoriality and there was not much we could do.”
She told what happened to her then-boyfriend Joe Gannon, who confirmed the version to the Post and years later she told her-now husband Santiago Lyon, who was also interviewed by the Post.
Arce denounced Arias before the Prosecutor’s Office for abusing her in 2014. Antillón reported her case to the newspaper La Nación, stating that Arias had groped her 35 years ago when she was a young reporter working for him.
I did not report it because at that time nobody would have listened to me, and the truth is that now it seems I owed this to myself (…) If they call me to testify, I will not think twice.”