A Spanish court on Tuesday sentenced a 60-year-old man who had pushed a minor he met on the Internet to suicide by sending him a hundred messages on WhatsApp.
He was sentenced to ten years in prison for homicide.
The 17-year-old minor killed himself on December 1, 2016 in the Castellón region of eastern Spain by jumping from his apartment into the courtyard of his building.
According to the judicial authorities of the region, he had been harassed by the accused on the messaging system.
The first exchanges were of a sexual nature and alluded to a previous conversation.
On the day of his death, the sexagenarian had "sent more than 119 messages with intimidating and threatening content in less than three hours", they report in a press release.
Harassment and threats
The teenager then asked his interlocutor to stop, telling him “that he was a minor” and warning him “that if he continued like this, he was going to commit suicide”, adds the press release.
According to the judgment of the Castellón court, the accused was "fully aware of the anguish and unease" of the teenager and of the "high probability" that he would commit suicide.
Despite this, he continued to send her messages, which quickly took on an aggressive tone, the court said.
The sexagenarian has thus threatened to “publish” their previous “conversation” and to sue him for having accessed an adult site when he was a minor.
173,000 euros in damages
In addition to his prison sentence, the accused (who has the possibility of appealing) was ordered to pay 173,000 euros in damages to the parents and brother of the deceased for non-pecuniary damage.
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Cyber harassment