Moria Casán spoke again about the days she spent detained at the Casa del Buen Pastor in Asunción during the investigation into the disappearance of a necklace in 2012. According to the interview with Monumental 1080 AM radio, the Argentine actress and presenter described the experience as a period of “healing” and said she formed friendships with other inmates.
“I was never sad, I never cried, I was never afraid,” Casán said. According to her, living alongside her cellmates turned the prison into a kind of spiritual retreat. The artist said she listened to the inmates’ stories and even arranged for the air-conditioning units in the area where she was held to be replaced.
Casán also commented on a photograph that went viral at the time, in which she appears using a cellphone. She said the device was lent to her by a fellow inmate and that she had not entered the prison with it. “Paraguay loves me, I love Paraguay,” she said, adding that she held no resentment toward the justice system or the Paraguayan people.
The detention was linked to the case of a necklace valued at around US$70,000 and owned by Paraguayan jeweler Armando Benítez Gill. The jewelry reportedly disappeared after Casán wore it; in her recent remarks, she maintained that she had not committed the theft and had kept the piece for only one minute before it disappeared.
The case involved a private US$35,000 settlement between the artist and Benítez Gill. The payment was formalized before a notary and signed by the jeweler, his lawyer Carlos Rodríguez Brun and Casán’s lawyer, Matías Morla. One day after the settlement, fragments of the jewelry appeared in an envelope at the Luque Criminal Court.
After leaving Paraguay, Casán returned to the country while an international arrest warrant was in force and spent several days at the Casa del Buen Pastor. The sequence — her 2012 detention, her return under an international warrant and the private settlement — returned to public debate with the August 14 premiere of Moria, Netflix’s biographical series, which devotes an episode to the artist’s time in Paraguay’s prison system.