Hostel owner sentenced to prison for sexual assault

The fourth section of the Provincial Court of Pontevedra has sentenced the owner of a hostel to a year and a half in prison as the perpetrator of a crime of minor sexual assault, of which a 16-year-old girl was the victim.

The court has disqualified him for three and a half years from any profession, trade or activities that involve regular and direct contact with minors and has imposed a ban on approaching the minor and communicating with her by any means for two and a half years. As civil liability, the defendant must compensate the minor with 1,000 euro for the moral damage caused. The sentence has acquitted him of two crimes of sexual abuse of a minor under 16 years of age in application of the in dubio pro reo principle.

The judges consider it proven that on April 23, 2021, three minors went, with the consent of their parents, to spend the night at the hostel owned by the convicted person, which at that time was closed to the public. Once at the scene, the minors began to play different games, making the defendant participate in those games. It was in that context, the judges indicate, when one of the minors pulled on the defendant’s pants, who, after pulling up his pants, “with the intention of violating her sexual integrity,” picked her up in the air, sat on the sofa and placed her face down on his knees. «After slapping her, he lowered her shorts, leaving the minor with her exposed bottom in the air, and then, after the girl had pulled up her shorts, he lowered her head over the minor’s buttocks and proceeded to nibble her leg just below the buttock,” says the ruling. At another time of the night, the accused, addressing the minor, put two fingers in his mouth, stuck out his tongue and began to make movements simulating oral sex. He then picked up the victim, who was sitting on the sofa, and, after throwing her on top of the other two girls who were on the floor on the duvet, “he began to play with them until, at a given moment, the accused “placed himself on the floor face up and picked up the affected woman and sat her on his abdomen, while holding her legs.”

To hand down its sentence, the Court has taken into account the statement of the accused, the testimony of the three minors, that of the mother of one of them, the testimony of the Guardia Civil agent who viewed the recording made by the installed camera in the living room of the hostel and the documentary evidence. The court assures that it has “no doubt that the acts carried out by the accused on the minor’s body have an unequivocal sexual nature,” while emphasising that “it is not just about simple tickling”, but of actions that exceed what is innocuous and inappropriate, and cannot have any other consideration than that of a sexual nature. Thus, it emphasises that these are acts “that threaten the sexual integrity of the minor and injure her.” But “given the above, we also consider that the application of section 3 of article 181 of the Penal Code is appropriate, as long as the facts, without diminishing their seriousness, are of lesser importance given that there was no touching of any of the minor’s sexual organs.” nor were they carried out under the clothes and, of course, there was no violence or intimidation involved, taking place in a context of games in which the minor and the accused participate,” the judges explain in the resolution, against which an appeal can be filed.

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