Prison Sentences a Decade after Sexual Assault

Three men have been sentenced to four years in prison for molesting, as a group, a girl in a car parked in the car park of a nightclub in Torrevieja.

The sentence confirmed each participant of a crime of sexual abuse and continued intercourse, but applies mitigation due to delays during processing.

The incident occurred during the early hours of August 24, 2008, when the defendants, who had been released on bail since the incident almost a decade ago, met the victim in a disco and persuaded her to accompany them to a vehicle, where she was stripped naked and the men took turns to have intercourse.

The court in Elche says the girl was affected by alcohol intake and other substances that could not be determined during the investigation, which “overrode her will to prevent and understand what was happening.”

According to the court reporting, while one of the accused abused her in the car, his friends invited other young people who were in the car park to join in, with expressions like “Come in, there’s free beer”, and “come on, she doesn´t know anything”, amongst others.

Some acquaintances knew the victim because they were from the same village, and saw that she was not aware of what was happening and tried to intervene, later reporting as witnesses.

The next day, the victim, who did not remember anything was taken by a family member, who had also witnessed the incident, to the health centre and then the Guardia Civil to report what had happened.

The victim had to undergo treatment and contraceptives to prevent possible sexually transmitted diseases for several months and remains, “afraid to go out alone on the street,” according to the court´s finding, which provides compensation of 30,000 euro from the assailants.