Argentina’s Supreme Court of Justice of Mendoza province overturned the 2023 acquittal of Kumiko Kosaka, a former nun and Japanese national, in the notorious Provolo Institute abuse case, ruling on Friday, August 21, 2026, that the lower court had ignored key testimony from deaf victims. Kosaka now faces up to 50 years in prison as the case returns to a lower court to determine her punishment.
The Provolo Institute in Mendoza was a boarding school for children with hearing and speech disabilities. Kosaka was one of nine women originally acquitted in 2023 of abusing students there; the Mendoza court’s Friday ruling upheld the acquittals of the other eight defendants, meaning Kosaka is the only one whose case was reversed.
Why the Original Acquittal Was Overturned
The Supreme Court found that the lower court had systematically discounted testimony from victims who are deaf and largely non-verbal, treating it as less reliable rather than working through the accommodations needed to properly weigh it. That finding is significant beyond this one case: it sets a precedent that lower Argentine courts can’t simply set aside testimony from victims with communication disabilities without a substantive reason tied to the evidence itself.
What Happens Now
The case returns to a lower court, which will need to determine Kosaka’s sentence rather than retry the underlying facts, since the Supreme Court’s ruling addressed how the original verdict was reached rather than overturning the factual findings outright. The broader Provolo case has already resulted in convictions of several priests and staff in earlier proceedings, and this ruling reopens the question of institutional accountability for one of the defendants who had avoided it.
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