60 must be effective in the terms of the Convention.211 The Court has reiterated that this obligation implies that the remedy must be appropriate to combat the violation and be applied effectively by the competent authority.212 183. As indicated above (supra paras. 176), the Court emphasizes that the victim’s participation in criminal proceedings is not limited merely to redressing the damage but, above all, to making effective her rights to know the truth and to justice before a competent court. This necessarily implies that, at the domestic level, adequate and effective remedies must exist for a victim to be able to contest the competence of the authorities that exercise jurisdiction over matters regarding which it is considered that they do not have competence. Consequently, in this case, the remedy of amparo [relief] was not effective to allow Mrs. Fernández Ortega to contest the hearing of the rape by the military jurisdiction, and this constitutes a violation of Article 25(1) of the American Convention. C. rape Due diligence in processing the complaint and investigating the 184. The Inter-American Commission argued that Mrs. Fernández Ortega sought the protection of the authorities, but was confronted by “a system of justice that has not adapted its structures to respond to the specific needs of a […] victim of [sexual] abuse.” The State incurred in serious errors when investigating the facts and processing Mrs. Fernández Ortega’s complaint: i) on March 24, 2002, the official of the Common Public Prosecutor’s Office refused to receive the alleged victim’s complaint on learning that those accused of committing the offense were soldiers, and only received it following the intervention of the Inspector General of the Human Rights Commission of Guerrero; ii) there were no interpreters who spoke Me’paa and, consequently, Mrs. Fernández Ortega had to be assisted by someone from her community in order to file the complaint; iii) there were no female medical personnel available to perform the gynecological examination, so that the alleged victim “was referred to the Ayutla public hospital and had to wait until the following day to be examined”; iv) the female doctor who finally evaluated her was not a forensic physician, but rather a general practitioner and lacked the special knowledge to treat victims of this type of offense, and v) the medical examination focused on a physical and gynecological examination, was not detailed, and did not include any findings on psychological aspects; moreover, even though more than eight years have elapsed since the incident, the psychological report on the alleged victim is still pending. Subsequently, the technical errors and omissions continued when the State experts failed to observe scientific investigation methodology applicable to samples of semen as biological evidence of the offense, and did not anticipate the need to carry out DNA testing. To the contrary, “they caused the destruction of the samples taken from the victim’s vaginal cavity, which was basic fundamental evidence, revealing a lack of respect for women victims of sexual offenses and the failure to give priority to such offenses in the entities where justice is imparted.” Hence, they thwarted the possibility of identifying the alleged perpetrators. Given the aforementioned, the Commission requested the Court to declare that the State violated Articles 8 and 25 of the American Convention in relation with Article 1.1 thereof. 185. Regarding the specific obligation to punish violence against women, the Commission indicated that it had received “information about the barriers that 211 Cf. Judicial Guarantees in States of Emergency (Arts. 27(2), 25 and 8 American Convention on Human Rights). Advisory Opinion OC-9/87 of October 6, 1987. Series A No. 9, para. 24; Case of Radillla Pacheco, supra note 32, para. 296, and Case of Chitay Nech et al., supra note 18, para. 202. 212 Cf. Case of Maritza Urrutia, supra note 111, para 117. Case of Radillla Pacheco, supra note 32, para. 296, and Case of Chitay Nech et al., supra note 18, para. 202.