The Provincial Court returns to try former judge Fernando Ferrín Calamita, although he does so before an empty chair. The former magistrate, disqualified in 2009 for obstructing the adoption of the biological daughter of a homosexual woman by his partner, became the great absentee this Thursday in his own trial.
As he had already announced in a letter, Ferrín Calamita chose not to appear at the hearing in which he faces a year and a half in prison for an alleged hate crime. The former judge once again faced justice as a result of a letter published in June 2020 on his Facebook wall in which he assured that these women, the same ones who in their day were harmed by his unfair resolution, had ended up separating and they had left their common daughter in a helpless situation. A false accusation that the former judge would end up publicly retracting almost a year later.
Those who did attend the court date were the two mothers who explained that the former judge’s letter generated “a wave of hatred” in networks in which they received insults, humiliation and even threats of physical assault. “We live in tremendous fear and helplessness,” stressed one of the mothers. “We were very worried about our children. Anyone who is a parent can understand it.”
The former judge, who apologized publicly in 2021 for this letter, was represented at the hearing by his defense lawyer, Pedro López Graña, who attributed the letter to an “error” by the accused. “We cannot equate clumsiness with a hate crime,” he stressed. The lawyer also insisted that by prosecuting Calamita’s statements “we are hindering freedom of expression.”
The prosecutor, for her part, emphasized that the two women “were subjected to public humiliation, ridicule, discredit” and were “questioned in their condition as persons and as mothers because of their sexual orientation.” She stressed that the former magistrate, with this letter, did not try at any time to help the daughter of the complainants -as she claimed-, but rather that her intention was to create “an opinion of discredit” towards women. “She knows the limits very well, she has paid the consequences of her transgressions and her actions are not innocent,” she stressed.
The Public Ministry demands, in addition to the prison sentence, that the ex-judge be imposed six years of disqualification for an educational, sports or leisure profession or trade. It also demands that it compensate each of those affected by 3,000 euros.
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