The second chamber of the Criminal Division of the Court of First Instance has sentenced a man to three years in prison and a fine of 5,000 euros for sexually assaulting his partner's daughter in a home in Lanzarote.
The Court has convicted the acts as a crime of sexual abuse and not of sexual assault with the aggravating factor of kinship as requested by the private prosecution.
The events date back to the night of November 21, 2021, when the convicted person was celebrating a party with family and friends on the island. The now convicted person got into the young woman's bed, who was asleep, and performed different gropes on her. The victim suffers from reactive post-traumatic stress since then.
The convicted man came to admit via WhatsApp to his ex-partner "that he never wanted to get aroused with her, that it was an internal struggle". Despite this conviction, the private prosecution requested that he also be tried for other charges of warning and sexual assault, for events that would have occurred between 2010 and 2013, when the victim was a minor.
Prescription of some of the crimes
The private prosecution also accused the already convicted man of a sexual assault offense. However, Section Six of the Provincial Court of Las Palmas ruled that "the concurrence of this offense was not deduced."
At the same time, court number two of the Criminal Section of the Court of First Instance sets out part of the reported facts, which allegedly occurred between 2010 and 2013, the law to be applied is that of 1999. Under this previous law, the statute of limitations is calculated from the victim's age of majority up to a period of five years. Therefore, it considers the facts reported for sexual assault between 2010 and 2013 as "time-barred".
In this regard, he states that except for the crime reported in 2021, the rest are time-barred. Furthermore, he points out that until the reform of the law in 2015, the age of "sexual consent" was thirteen years and sexual abuse was punished with sentences of up to three years.
Currently, after the reform of Organic Law 8/2021 on the Protection of Children and Adolescents, the statute of limitations for crimes does not begin to be counted until the victim turns 35 years old. However, as the Only Yes Means Yes Law had not yet been approved, the acts are classified as sexual abuse and not as sexual assault.
The Court has imposed a restraining order against the young woman for six years, with the prohibition of approaching her home or any place frequented by her within 300 meters. Against the sentence, an appeal can be filed within ten days.