The civil guard accused of committing alleged sexual offenses against a woman in Lanzarote denied these facts last Friday and pleaded innocent, in the trial held by the Provincial Court of Las Palmas. The events occurred in February 2011, on the road from Playa Blanca to Yaiza, when this agent was no longer on duty. The driver who was stopped reported that he had touched her breast and had tried to kiss her, after asking her to get into his own vehicle.
The agent did acknowledge that the conversation with the driver started from a strictly professional level, but then moved to a personal one. However, he insisted that he never overstepped the line with her.
The Prosecutor's Office has been the one to carry out this process, since the alleged victim decided not to file a claim. The prosecutor considered in his indictment that the agent had committed an alleged crime of sexual abuse and another of illegal detention, for which he requested the defendant to pay a fine of 24 months at 10 euros per day. For its part, the defense requested the free acquittal of the agent.
The agent assured during the trial that he was leaving work heading towards his house, when he saw a vehicle on the road that was driving erratically. Thus, he explained that he stopped the driver, who was accompanied by another woman, to ask for her documentation and check that she had not consumed alcohol. At this moment, the driver assures that the agent asked her to accompany him to his private vehicle, since he was not driving the official car, and when they were inside, "he activated the door lock" and, later, "he touched her breast and tried to kiss her".
For his part, the civil guard explained that the woman "voluntarily" accessed his vehicle, in which he did not have any type of tools to be able to do the breathalyzer test, since it was not the official car. In addition, he said that the doors can be opened from the inside and that he did not activate the central locking from the driver's door, since the button is located on the front of the vehicle.
The agent did acknowledge that he started the conversation with this driver from a strictly professional level, but then moved to the personal level. In this sense, he said that the conversation they had was between two people who were getting to know each other and who found each other pleasant. For its part, the Prosecutor's Office considered in its indictment that the agent "had touched her breast" and had tried "to kiss her" without her "having given her consent to it".
The defendant's defense assured in its final argument that the woman's complaint seemed "implausible" and, in addition, said that she had given different versions of the same event, "in a different way and in a different chronological order". The defendant continues to be a civil guard in Lanzarote.
