The criminal chamber of the Supreme Court (TS) has rejected the appeal filed by a resident of Lanzarote sentenced to a total of fifteen years in prison for sexually assaulting and abusing his sister and a nephew, both minors, when they lived together, and to whom he must compensate with four thousand euros each.
As determined by the Provincial Court of Las Palmas and the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC), it is proven that between 2005 and 2009, when he lived with his nephew of less than eight years old, on one occasion he grabbed him by the head and forced him to perform fellatio.
As for the defendant's sister, on at least four occasions he sat her on top of him when she was of a similar age, kissed her on the mouth and carried out touching over her clothes.
The defendant pointed out that the conviction had been based exclusively on the testimony of the victims, which in turn he considers not to be “direct, clear, forceful and without contradictions”, since none of them witnessed the acts of aggression of the other.
The child stated “without further details that on one occasion he saw how the other minor was on the defendant's knees and she told her cousin that he had forced him to perform fellatio”.
The convicted man appealed to the drug use and the mental illness that was diagnosed, which was confirmed in an expert test, and argued that the children's stories were “implausible and incoherent, lacking objective elements of coronation that were minimally acceptable”. However, the Supreme Court rejects these arguments and considers that both offered “highly reliable” information, and that they were not affected by a bad relationship with the appellant or by the concurrence of spurious purposes.
Nor does it believe that they were victims of suggestive pressures from third parties or of contamination of the story, and says that no significant contradictions are appreciated, and that the imprecision about the dates is not significant given the age of the victims, as determined by two experts.
Although the girl did not observe what was happening with her cousin, she did witness how he left the room in which the defendant was, and the nephew saw how his uncle put the girl on his knees.
Regarding the influence that drug use may have had on this type of event and the unspecified personality disorder, and schizoaffective disorder, diagnosed, it is pointed out that they do not involve alterations or loss of judgment of reality and it is ruled out that he suffered a delusional disorder.
The penalty for sexual assault is imposed because there was an abuse of cohabitation.
