The Criminal Chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands has dismissed the appeal filed by the defense of Carlos Mario M.G. who sexually abused his partner's daughter when she was only eight years old and has thus confirmed his sentence of 12 years in prison.
The Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands thus supports the ruling of the First Section of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, which determined that he was guilty of continuously abusing the girl. In the same position, the Public Prosecutor's Office and the prosecution exercised by the minor's mother supported the sentence in the first instance.
According to the background of the case, the accused took advantage of "every occasion in which he remained alone with the minor" to touch her genitals and insert, "on multiple occasions", his fingers into her vagina.
In one of the moments when the minor's mother was out of the house, the accused abused the minor and inserted his penis into the girl's vagina, without using protection and "without it being recorded that he ejaculated". On another occasion, he licked her genitals.
Despite not being her biological father, the man had assumed the role of the girl's father "in all corresponding facets" and the minor trusted him. In addition, he blackmailed her with publishing nude photographs of her mother if she said anything.
The episode of the villa and the destruction of a mobile phone
The TSJC has dismissed the arguments offered by the defense of the convicted man, who alluded to an error in the assessment of the evidence and the violation of the presumption of innocence. It also relies on different peripheral elements such as that the accused would have tried to destroy his mobile phone with sexual photographs of his partner and with the suspicion that he had also recorded the abuse of the minor.
According to the statement of the minor's mother in the trial and which was reproduced by La Voz, the scenes of continuous sexual assault were uncovered in May 2020. In that year, the family rented a villa for a family celebration. The whole family attended the meeting, as well as a friend of Mario and his daughter.
At one point in the night, Mario fell asleep on the sofa where his friend's daughter was also. Some screams woke up the people who were in the house and the young woman uttered that Mario was sexually touching her.
The Chamber refers to "a peripheral corroborating element" of the facts. In this case, it is the mobile phone of the accused, which he threw (or fell, according to him) into the pool of the villa. "With the episode of the villa I felt that frustration that it had happened to another girl and that I had not said it," she began, "but it gave me the strength to try to say it," the young woman herself narrated in her statement in court.
"The damage to abused children projects its negative effects for much longer. The lacerating experience of these attacks on her sexual integrity will accompany the minor for a good part of her life," the Chamber states among its arguments.
With this new ruling, the Chamber has ratified the sentence and Carlos Mario M.G. has been sentenced to 12 years in prison, absolute disqualification during the time of the sentence, the prohibition of approaching less than 500 meters from the minor, as well as communicating with her by any means in 20 years.
In addition, once he leaves prison, he will not be able to approach her for a period of eight years, which will be executed after the custodial sentence imposed. He will also have to compensate her with 20,000 euros for the moral damages caused, since the victim tried to take her own life on different occasions as a result of what happened.