The foreman, whom the magistrates also consider the author of a crime against the rights of workers, must compensate each of the victims with 30,000 euros
The Provincial Court sentenced Mimoune Zouhir, an agricultural foreman of Moroccan origin, to sentences totaling 42 years in prison for six continuous crimes of sexual abuse with carnal access and prevalation on a farm in La Palma, Cartagena. In addition to the prohibition of approaching the victims and the measure of probation for 5 years, which will be executed after the custodial sentences.
The Court considers it proven that the defendant facilitated agricultural work to foreign women in an irregular situation in Spain, most of them with family responsibilities in their country, lacking close support and unfamiliar with Spanish. In addition, “taking advantage of the situation of said people who depended on him for his subsistence, and that he took them alone, he had unwanted sexual relations with them,” the resolution explains.
Thus, one by one, the magistrates relate six cases in which the defendant “using the advantages provided by being the one who provided jobs to a person without resources” had sexual relations with compatriots, of Moroccan nationality, who came to him in search of help to get a job. On some occasions, the defendant acted as an intermediary between foreign workers in an irregular situation and agricultural entrepreneurs and, on others, he employed them for himself in his small farm.
deportation warning
In all the cases described, the resolution abounds, “both to achieve sexual relations and for the victims to return to the scene of the events to work”, the accused, in addition to taking advantage of his situation as “conqueror”, warned them, to dissuade them from a possible complaint, “of his possible deportation”.
After verifying the vulnerability of the complainants, the magistrates warn that there is overwhelming evidence, in addition to the statements of the interested parties, about the reality of the sexual relations maintained by the accused with several of the victims in the place indicated by them. Thus they allude to the report of the Criminalistics Service of the Civil Guard in relation to the mattress found in one of the dependencies of the farm, indicated by two of the victims, in which organic remains are identified that coincide with the genetic profile of the accused and in which profiles of four women are obtained.
The court also highlights, among other pieces of evidence, the recording of the telephone call with one of the complainants in which the defendant, among other obscene expressions, says that «if he wants to work, we’ll fuck; if not, go to hell”, and “if I don’t fuck any of them, I won’t employ any of them either”. Conversation that he first acknowledges having had, and its content, although assuring that it was a joke, which is refuted in the trial “without providing any convincing explanation.”
The magistrates rule out for “inconsistency” the hypothesis of revenge or the possibility of a collusion or trap of the complainants, suggested by the defense, in order to regularize their situation. Finally, the court “comes to the conviction that the statement of the complainants corresponds to reality in terms of the existence of a plurality of sexual relations, in a very similar context, with the sufficient differences typical of dealing with episodes and people different”.
The Court also condemns the accused to compensate each of the victims with 30,000 euros and 3 years in prison as the author of a crime against workers. The resolution is not final, against it it is possible to file an appeal before the Civil and Criminal Chamber of the TSJ.
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