In a renewed hope for the victims of acid attacks in Colombia, President Juan Manuel Santos signed a law named after Natalia Ponce, who was a victim of an acid attack in 2014. According to The City Paper, the Natalia Ponce Law serves a harsher punishment for those convicted of the crime.

On Monday, after the law was signed, President Santos said, "We don't want to continue to occupy the dishonorable position of being one of the leading countries in the world in terms of the number of acid attacks. We must do everything necessary to protect victims and prevent future cases."

 

Under the Natalia Ponce Law, a person who purposely harms someone with an acid attack can face 12 to 30 years of imprisonment, depending on the severity of the attack. The law has also increased the number of years in prison for those who commit such crimes against minors and those that have resulted to death.

Even if a convicted attacker succeeds on living through his prison sentence, they are also bound to pay a fine of at least 644 million pesos up to 1.9 billion pesos on grave offenses. In order to minimize the incident of acid attacks, the law also imposed a minimum of one year up to five years of imprisonment for attacks that did not result to physical damage.

According to BBC, Ponce after her high profile acid attack incident, became a high-profile representative to those who were victims of acid attacks. In Colombia, at least 100 incidents of acid attacks have occurred during the past decade, and while women seem to dominate the numbers, men also had their fair share of the incidents.

After the law was signed in November, Ponce gave a short statement saying, "To all the people like myself who continue to fight, and to all the women who are victims of violence, I would tell you to not be quiet. Don't be afraid and believe in justice" as quoted by The City Paper.

According to the Daily Mail, Ponce was attacked by a certain Jonathan Vega on March 27, 2014. Developing a distinct obsession on Ponce, Vega stalked her in almost everything she did until that day when he finally had the chance to commit the crime. Recounting the incident that happened during that fateful day, she said that she clearly remembers the time she thought, her life ended.

"I don't remember the pain, I wasn't worried about my skin, but I was terrified for my eyes," she recalled.