• Events Maximum tension in Logroño for the multiple rape of seven adolescents to two girls
  • Events Order the provisional release of the minor interned for the gang rape of an 11-year-old girl from Badalona
  • Interior Rape and sexual abuse grow by 24% compared to before the pandemic in Barcelona and Catalonia

A juvenile court in Barcelona has sentenced to 18 months of internment a minor, 14 years old, who carried out surveillance tasks while a friend, who at the time of the events was 11 years old, raped a 13-year-old girl in the vicinity of a park in Barcelona.

The sentence only condemns the 14-year-old who acted as a watchman because the 11-year-old sex offender is not imputable under the law because he is under 14 years old. The events happened on the afternoon of September 20, 2020, in the vicinity of a park in Barcelona, where around 20:45 hours the two minors were.

The boys, who were sitting in a park, saw a 13-year-old girl they knew by sight, approached her and, after initially assuring her that they were accompanying her home, the 11-year-old stood in her way and instructed her to go down a different path than the one she was following to return home.

She said she didn't want to, to which the 11-year-old threatened her saying, "Do you want to live or die?" to which she replied, frightened, that she wanted to live.

The 11-year-old boy led her to an area that was hidden by some bushes where the sexual assault took place, while asking his friend to stay close, three meters away, watching that no one came, to which the latter agreed.

For these facts, a trial was held in a juvenile court last February in which the Prosecutor's Office considered the minor who had supervised the perpetrator of a serious crime of sexual assault on a child under 16 years of age, alleging that by doing nothing to prevent it and having contributed to it with his surveillance, He had committed the offence "by omission" as a "necessary cooperator".

The Public Prosecutor's Office provided a Supreme Court ruling stating that, in a violation, "whoever is present at the acts and collaborates with their surveillance, is being integrated into the group commissioning act."

The defendant tried to doubt that there had been a rape, claiming that his friend had taken the victim to an inconspicuous area, so he did not witness what happened and that, when he returned, his friend told him that he had been consented.

However, the judge gives veracity to the story of the victim, who assures that the "vigilante" witnessed the rape, arguing that his statement has been persistent over time and that she lacks a motivation to accuse the two minors, taking into account that she only knew them by sight.

The sentence also states that the fear suffered by the girl was increased by the surveillance and intimidation of the 14-year-old boy, whom he condemns as the author of a serious crime of sexual assault.

The judge sentences him to a closed regime of internment (which he must serve in a juvenile penitentiary) but reduces the months of duration of the measure requested by the Prosecutor's Office: from three years to 18 months.

He justifies his decision in reports from the team of psychologists of the juvenile court who affirm that the minor has experienced an improvement in his behavior and that, when he was transferred to another school, he has distanced himself from the group that influenced him to have risky behaviors.

In addition to the sentence of internment, the judge orders the minor, and in the alternative his parents, to pay 5,000 euros to the victim as compensation for moral damage.

  • Barcelona
  • Justice

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Learn more