The Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC) has acquitted a resident of Lanzarote accused of sexually abusing the two minor daughters of his partner.
The TSJC accepted the appeal filed by the defendant's defense and annulled the sentence imposed by the Sixth Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas, which sentenced this resident to 12 years in prison for each victim, a restraining order, a prohibition from communicating with both by any means in the following ten years, and the payment of compensation of 10,000 euros to each.
The man had been in a romantic relationship with the minors' mother from 2009 until 2017. Nine months after the breakup between them, already in 2018, one of the minors escaped from the family home and was located by the Civil Guard. While at the police station, she testified before the National Police and revealed the alleged sexual abuse suffered by her mother's ex-boyfriend. Three days later, her mother filed a complaint.
As proven facts in the convicting sentence of the Provincial Court issued on November 27 and now revoked, this resident of Arrecife "with the intention of satisfying his sexual desires, taking advantage of the almost paternal-filial relationship he had with the minors and taking advantage of the occasions when his partner was absent from the home or asleep, made various touches in the genital areas of the minors, even inserting his fingers and penis into the vagina, forcing them to masturbate him and performing masturbation in their presence".
The lack of "specificity from the chronological point of view" was highlighted by the TSJC Chamber. "Reasonable doubts arise about the reasons given to justify the delay in the complaint or, in other words, why the facts were kept silent for so long." The facts were reported in 2018 and the alleged abuses would have occurred between 2009 and June 2017.
According to this ruling, one of the minors was five years old when he began caressing her legs and seven when she suffered the first touches in intimate areas in the family home. "During those years he masturbated in front" of one of the girls, "even calling her attention to observe how he put on a condom," the Chamber stated then.
In an appeal to the sentence initiated by the defense and later joined by the Public Prosecutor's Office, which never filed charges, alluded to the "error in the assessment of the evidence" and "violation of the right to effective judicial protection." The defendant's defense denounced "incoherence, irrationality or arbitrariness" when assessing the evidence provided.
Among other points, the ruling of the Provincial Court highlighted an episode in 2016, in which the accused "guided by the same spirit taking advantage of the absence" of the mother of one of the victims, "and under the pretext of a new game, undressed the minor completely and tied her to the bed with ropes for making bags and after touching her genitals, tried to penetrate the minor, who began to scream in pain."
To prevent this situation from being reported, and according to these facts proven by the now revoked sentence, the accused "stating that she should not tell anyone, because otherwise her mother would go to jail and she to a center." Finally, he declared it proven that "he managed to maintain these relationships and not report them for fear that the defendant would cause some harm to her direct relatives."
The appeal
In this appeal, the defendant did not denounce the "inexistence of evidence, but its assessment and sufficiency." In addition, he accused the victims of falling into contradictions in their statements.
The Criminal Chamber of the TSJC concludes that the divergences or contradictions should be considered "normal" and that "a textual repetition in the manner of a disc cannot be required." At the same time, it highlighted that in this case, "differences emerge in the various accounts that sow doubt and affect the parameter of persistence."
At the same time, it appreciated "the lack of specificity of the facts narrated by the two sisters. It could be due, certainly, to the age of the complainants and the time elapsed, the experts do not understand it that way, but it is also true that such lack of precision affects the right to defense."
In addition, the review of this ruling recovered the psychological expert reports carried out on the two minor complainants. "The sentence departs completely, in an unjustified manner in our opinion, from the conclusions of the experts, who stated categorically that the testimony of the minors is not credible," concluded the Superior Court of Justice.
At the same time, it revealed that the prosecution is the one that must provide evidence that yields results, but that the same requirements of justification cannot be "established with respect" to the defense.
