A 22-year-old man was sentenced to nine years in prison in Spain after confessing sexual abuse through WhatsApp. The man will also have to pay compensation of 15,000 euros (more than 60 million Colombian pesos) to the victim.
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According to the newspaper ‘El País’, the conviction of the young Martí, as the aggressor was identified, was imposed by the Girona Court after evaluating the existing evidence. The young man was convicted of the crimes of consummated sexual assault and attempted sexual assault against Mireia, as the victim has been identified.
The facts
The cited newspaper mentions that the events occurred in April 2019. Mireia, the young victim of sexual abuse, arrived at Martí’s house, with whom she had “a close friendship” for a long time, after a party.
According to the story of the young woman, who was 18 years old at the time, she slept at the man’s house after the celebration in which they had been together so as not to disturb her relatives upon arrival.
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Mireia narrated, according to ‘El País’, that the young man arrived in his underwear to the guest room, the place where she was. The teenager lay down next to her and began to touch her without her consent. With violence, he tried to separate the woman’s legs to abuse her.
The strength of the young woman managed to stop the aggressor, who then fell asleep.
However, according to the Spanish newspaper, the young man woke up to turn off an alarm on his cell phone and that’s when he sexually abused Mireia.
The confession that served before justice
After what happened, the young woman went to the house of another friend, who devised a strategy for the aggressor to accept the abuse to which he had subjected the teenager.
Joan, a friend of Mireia, used WhatsApp to get the man to confess the abuse. In the messages, the aggressor apologized to the young woman for “having gone overboard”, but justified what happened with a “risque” conversation they had had during the party.
“If at the time I didn’t want to, I don’t know why you had to do it,” the young woman wrote to the aggressor, who replied: “Yeah, yeah. I have no right”.
The aggressor also sent other messages in which he told Mireia that she had “provoked” him and that he “had not been able to stop”.
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The court process
According to the newspaper ‘El País’, the court concluded that the conversation in which the young man admitted the act constituted a key piece of evidence that confirmed the victim’s account.
“The conversation, for which the defendant was unable to give any credible explanation at trial (he said he had been misunderstood, without further ado) “clearly corroborates” the victim’s account”, mentioned the medium.
The court determined that the woman’s account was sincere and credible and that it had remained stable since the beginning of the judicial process. In addition, the justice concluded that in this case there was violence and intimidation towards the victim.
(You can read: Express consent will be key to judging sexual crimes in Spain)
In the middle of the hearings, the young man affirmed that the relationship had been consensual. Later, he claimed that the victim had made up the story to gain her parents’ attention.
Coinciding with this and other complaints of sexual abuse, the Spanish Congress approved a law a week ago that makes consent a key element in judging crimes of sexual abuse.
The ‘only if is yes’ law indicates that any sexual act without consent will be classified as assault.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
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