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Student pens emotional post after sexual assault and murder of two female backpackers.

 

Following the recent murder of two female backpackers, a Paraguayan student has taken to Facebook to challenge society’s victim blaming mentality.

Argentinians Maria Jose Coni, 22,  and Marina Menegazzo, 21, were travelling together through Ecuador in February when they accepted an invitation to stay at the house of two men they allegedly met earlier that day.

Six days later Jose Coni and Menegazzo’s bodies were found a short distance from the house stuffed into plastic bags. The women had both suffered head wounds.

Maria Jose Coni and Marina Menegazzo. Source: Facebook

After the initial outcry at the murders, questions began to be asked about why the two young women were travelling alone (A.K.A without a man) and if they had brought the crime upon themselves for accepting the offer of accommodation.

Because apparently in 2016, a man responding to sexual resistance by bludgeoning a woman across the head is still a woman’s fault.

Maria Jose Coni and Marina Menegazzo. Source: Facebook

Taking to Facebook to silence the victim blaming, Guadalupe Acosta wrote the now viral post from the perspective of Jose Coni and Menegazzo.

It began:

“Yesterday I was killed… but worse than death was the humiliation which came after.”

Since being published a week ago the post has been shared more than 720,000 times.

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The hashtag #viajosola (which translates to I travel alone) is also trending on Twitter, with over 5000 women tweeting personal travel stories and opinions on the issue.

“I want to do travel alone without the fear I’ll be punished for it,” one user tweeted.

Another wrote, “As an independent woman I have travelled alone and hung out with strangers. There is NOTHING wrong with this #viagosola #Stopviolence.”

Police have identified and arrested two men in connection to the murders.

According the state prosecutor Eduardo Gallardo Rodas, one detainee claims that, “he and his friend were drunk and one led one of the girls to his room and tried to touch her, she resisted and he hit her with a stick to the head, killing her instantly.”

While some accounts claim the men were known to a friend of Jose Coni and Menegazzo, others state they had only met earlier that day.

Tweet translates to: Images of the alleged perpetrators of the murders of the young Argentine citizens who were arrested yesterday. 

Jose Coni and Menegazzo were said to have accepted the offer for accommodation after being robbed in their hostel the day before.

The two men have admitted to the rape and murders and are awaiting sentencing.