A young man in the Canary Islands is acquitted of sexually assaulting a minor because his mental age was equivalent to 17 years

The Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife has acquitted a young man of sexually assaulting a minor, who was about to turn 15 at the time, partly because he suffers from mild intellectual disability, and although he was 19 years old at the time, his mental age was equivalent to 17.

The acquittal is also based on the contradictions in the versions offered by the girl to the court and different accounts she gave during the judicial proceedings and to the witnesses.

The complaint filed at the time stated that at around 11:00 a.m. on February 16, 2022, the accused went to the teenager's house in Santa Cruz, invited by her when she was alone recovering from a knee dislocation and a sprain, for which she had to rest.

Once in the house, they both went to the girl's room, settled on the bed, started watching movies on the phone, and then had full sexual relations.

Two weeks later, the minor went to a medical center accompanied by another friend to whom she had just told what happened, and from there she was referred to the courts, where the minor and her mother filed a complaint.

Throughout the judicial proceedings, the mother, who arrived at the house shortly after the events, and relatives and acquaintances to whom she related what happened, appeared as witnesses.

Some of the expert reports prepared pointed to the possibility that she had indeed been the victim of sexual assault.

The Court, however, considers that the girl's statements during the trial were contradictory, and she always stated that she was forced to have these relations, while the accused acknowledged the facts but said that they had been consensual.

The complainant stated that at one point she asked him to stop, but the accused continued, grabbing her by the wrists, getting on top of her, and raping her.

The Court questions the credibility and has "serious doubts" about the complainant's account in aspects such as having omitted some details, which are theoretically striking and traumatic.

Thus, in court, she claimed to have been the object of an aggression of "extraordinary violence," receiving blows to her injured leg and ankle to break her will.

But during the trial, she made no reference to this and merely stated that the accused had held her by the wrists and that he was drunk.

"It is striking, and alien to the experience of the Court, that a victim tells some witnesses but forgets to tell others that she had received blows directed at injured parts of the body or that the aggressor was drunk, which would aggravate the feeling of insecurity and danger. There are details in the minor's account whose certainty is not proven" and that seem to have been denied by some of the friends who testified, the judgment states.

The girl also referred to having a boyfriend, whose existence no one else knew about.

The mother said that she maintained enough trust with her daughter for her to tell her what had happened, but despite arriving at the house shortly afterward, she knew nothing, although she saw bloodstains on the bed, "noticed her acting strangely," and saw that the house was untidy and had a particular smell.

The Prosecutor's Office classified the events as constituting a crime of sexual assault on a minor under sixteen years of age, for which it requested that the man be sentenced to 14 years and ordered to pay compensation of 30,000 euros, an amount that the private prosecution raised to 40,000 euros.