The Provincial Court of Castellón has sentenced the man who caused the death of a minor under 17 years of age to ten years in prison for a crime of homicide after sending him 119 harassing messages on WhatsApp in less than three hours. The defendant, Vicente Paradís, 62 years old and on provisional release, must compensate the parents and the brother of the victim with a total of 173,000 euros.
A popular jury had found him guilty of homicide, with the aggravating circumstance of superiority – withdrawn in the conviction – after the trial held last July. In his verdict, he appealed to the fact that the man “was aware of the anguish and uneasiness that he was causing him, to the point of wanting to take his own life, and knowing the high probability that the death of the minor would occur and accepting it, he continued to send him messages ”, a position that the Provincial Court of Castellón maintains in the condemnatory document. The prosecutor asked for 14 years in prison and the accusation 15.
The ruling states that “this permanent situation of harassment and emotional blackmail” suffered by the minor caused him to take his own life at his home in Vila-real (Castellón). It was on December 1, 2016. “Even after the minor committed suicide, the accused continued to send him messages similar to the previous ones and even photos simulating having denounced him in the City of Justice of Valencia,” the ruling states.
The events date back to 2016. The young man entered a contact page and began to communicate with the accused, almost 40 years older than him. Then he must have repented and the harassment began, which lasted seven hours. During three of them, Paradís sent him 119 messages. The minor answered some. Apologizing, pleading and warning him that he would take his own life. The man’s messages did not stop. “If you commit suicide, you will leave the brown to your parents”, “you will cry tears of blood in front of the judges and your parents”, were some of the answers that he found. Until eight months after the suicide, when the content of the mobile was dumped, the siege to which the boy had been subjected was not discovered.
The lawyer for the family of the minor who committed suicide, Juan Luis Serrano, considers that the sentence is insufficient. “We understand that the use of superiority exists. There is an abuse due to the immaturity of the minor, this aggravating circumstance exists. But the judge considers that the abuse of superiority is integrated into the criminal type. We will resort ”, he has stated to this newspaper.
Regarding the aggravating circumstance of superiority contemplated by the popular jury in its guilty verdict, the sentence indicates that it cannot be applied in this case “since it comes, in itself it insisted on the act itself, and therefore, it cannot be applied.” be applied twice. Thus, it clarifies that this “could concur not only when there is a physical superiority, and in this case, the accused was aware that the person with whom he was conversing through messages of WhatsApp he was a minor, and he expressly and specifically took advantage of such a situation, knowing and being aware of the immaturity and vulnerability that the minor showed, which is implicit in the action carried out by the accused to produce the crime. suicide in the minor. This does not add anything that was not in the action itself”.
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The condemned lawyer has also announced that he will appeal to the TSJ of the Valencian Community.
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