The Court of Navarra sentences a man to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting his stepdaughter and one year to her mother for not protecting her

The First Section of the Court of Navarra has sentenced a man to 10 years in prison for a continuous crime of sexual assault with carnal access to a minor under 16 years of age. The 33-year-old man raped his stepdaughter and touched her continuously from when she was six years old until she turned 11. In addition, the wife of the attacker and mother of the minor has been sentenced to 1 year in prison and 5 of probation as the perpetrator of an offense of sexual abuse by omission. The court considers it proven that, when the girl was nine years old, she told her mother that her stepfather had “touched her breasts”, had seen her naked and had asked her to show him her genitals, but the defendant “took no action.” sufficient to prevent such events from continuing to occur.” That is, she did not protect her daughter. The abuse occurred in the family home, in a town in the Pamplona region. The aggressor and the victim shared a home with the minor's mother and the couple's other daughter, born in 2019.

The events date back to 2015, when the victim was six years old. The stepfather, of South American origin, began the touching, taking advantage of the existing relationship of trust. The abuse was committed when his mother went to work. From the age of eight, to overcome the girl's opposition, he even threatened to hit her with a belt so that she would not resist.

In addition to the continuous touching, the court considered it proven that the man sexually assaulted his stepdaughter on several occasions. The abuses came to light in December 2022, when the victim and her sister were taken in by the Government of Navarra and she told the facts to an educator. Shortly after, on December 28 of that year, the stepfather was arrested and he has been provisionally imprisoned since January 24, 2023.

According to the sentence, issued in agreement between the parties, the aggressor will not be able to communicate or approach the victim at less than 300 meters for 18 years. Once the prison sentence has been completed, the man must serve a measure of supervised release for 7 years. The convicted person must also pay 25,000 euros to the minor as compensation for the moral damage caused. Both the aggressor and the mother have been given the mitigation of psychological anomaly for various reasons.

On the one hand, as determined by the expert report, the mother has “borderline intelligence, bordering on mild mental retardation, also associated with a condition of emotional dependency, which means that her intellectual abilities and abilities were moderately severely affected.” volitional for the facts subject to prosecution.” For his part, the convicted person has been diagnosed with mild mental retardation, with a 55% degree of mental handicap, and adaptation disorders that have caused, the resolution states, “a impairment of his intellectual faculties.”

Telephone 016 assists victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. You can also contact via email [email protected] and by WhatsApp at the number 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, you can call 112 or the National Police telephone numbers (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you cannot call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.