The Supreme Court has confirmed the 10-year prison sentence imposed on a balloon monitor 20 years of a school center of Santa Cruz de Tenerife for raping a student seven years younger than him.
The magistrates have appeal dismissed which the young man presented when he understood that it was not pertinent to either acquit him or reduce his sentence. They have insisted that in this case “the minor was very young – 13 years old” and the context of the relationship was “singularly relevant given that it occurred between a school student and a teacher or sports instructor, which allows it to be presumed in the latter a training and personal development much superior to that of the student.”
The sentence states that the events date back to July 2018, when the accused was assisting as a monitor of the basketball team. The young man – who was 20 years old at the time – He contacted the minor through Instagram and he gave her his phone number and then, “without hiding his true identity,” “convince her to meet alone at the end of that month or at the beginning of August” on the outskirts of the city.
In the first encounter, the accused touched the student. In the second, he “managed to have two complete sexual relations with the minor.” According to the sentence, the accused “took advantage of the young age and lack of maturity” of the girl, “without evidence of the use of violence or intimidation.”
Although then the young man He even asked her to send him naked photographs, she did not agree. The minor’s father reported the events in December of that year to the police authorities.
DOES NOT SEE CLOSENESS OF MATURITY
The Provincial Court sentenced the young man to 10 years in prison for a continuous crime of sexual abuse with carnal access and to pay compensation of 6,000 euros for the moral damages caused. He was also banned from approaching the victim for 13 years. He Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands confirmed the decision.
The convicted man, dissatisfied with the sentence, took his case to the Supreme Court considering that His right to the presumption of innocence had been violated and the Penal Code had been misapplied to him.
The young man alleged that the age difference between him and the minor was not “especially relevant” and insisted that there was “sufficient data to determine the closeness of both in the degree of maturity” that was not analyzed. He stressed that the girl “presented herself on social networks as being older than her real age” and that she had a “preference for boys older than her own age.”
Thus, the defense intended that the clause of the Penal Code which contemplates that the free consent of a minor under 16 years of age or the proximity of maturity would exclude her from criminal liability in the case of sexual abuse.
The magistrates recall that the Spanish criminal law It does not establish a specific age group in which said clause must operate – as happens, for example, in France. “In our Penal Code, proximity in age and degree of maturity must be taken into account, understanding that this last element requires analyzing growth, maturation and learning,” they point out. And they maintain that in this case there was no closeness of maturity because he was a monitor and she was a student.
SUPPORTS THE STATEMENT OF THE MINOR
In his appeal, the young man also insisted that the minor’s statement incurred “important contradictions”. “The minor’s version is hardly credible,” she said, while criticizing the fact that a forensic doctor had not recognized the girl once the complaint was filed.
In the resolution, for which Judge Eduardo de Porres was the rapporteur, the court explains that although “it is true that there were some inaccuracies” in the minor’s statement, this is explainable because “the victim of sexual abuse or assault is not always , especially when he is a minor and when they occur on different dates, times and places, he retains in his memory with absolute precision all the events and their specific circumstances.”
“In this case and in substance, the minor referred to the different encounters, the actual existence of which different witnesses have testified, stating precisely and categorically that there was, at least, a complete sexual relationship with penetration. In this there has been no contradiction,” the magistrates point out.
2024-04-01 08:42:49
#Ten #years #prison #basketball #instructor #raping #minor
