"I didn't want to report it for fear of being deported": 12 years in prison requested for raping a woman who was looking for work

BarcelonaAlmost four years later, Yaqui has told a court the sexual assault she suffered in an apartment in El Prat de Llobregat where she had gone for a job interview as a caregiver for an elderly woman. "I thought that no one would believe me, and since I was here illegally, I thought that I would be expelled immediately. I did not want to report it for fear of being deported," she replied when the defendant's lawyer questioned why it had taken her nine months to report the assault.

Today, when the trial was ready for sentencing, both the Prosecutor's Office and Yaqui's lawyer, Carolina Gallego, have ratified their accusations and have maintained the request that the man, who was 8 years old at the time of the assault, be sentenced to 12 years in prison. The accused is also charged with a crime of degrading treatment and another of threats for having made the complainant believe that he had contacts and power of influence to have her deported if she reported him.

During the questioning by the defendant's lawyer, Yaqui recounted in a broken voice that when she emigrated she spent "about twenty days detained at the airport" in France. At that moment, she said, it seemed real to her that the man - who had presented himself as working at the airport, when in reality he was a retired postal worker - could end up getting her deported.

The prosecutor in the case, who has highlighted the credibility of Yaqui's witness, has pointed out that the vulnerable situation she was in and the fear she felt made her believe it: "It may seem unbelievable to us, but she clearly believed it and never reported it for fear of being expelled."

In fact, Yaqui did not report the assault that has been tried today until nine months later, when the Mossos d'Esquadra contacted her believing that it could be related to another case they were investigating.

A photo that is not of her

During the trial, for approximately a quarter of an hour, Yaqui listened to two audio recordings that the defendant's defense presented to try to exonerate him. They are conversations between the defendant and a woman - she does not recognize herself - in which he repeatedly asks her if she liked the time they spent together and how much he should pay her in exchange for sex. Both the prosecution and Yaqui's lawyer have warned the court that the voice is not his and that, in addition, the date of the audio files corresponds to March 2023, almost two years after the assault being tried.

The defendant has also tried to defend himself by presenting a photograph with the intention of showing that Yaqui left his house without any injury and putting on a good face. However, this morning he acknowledged that the photograph he had presented is of another woman.

The man has declined to answer the questions of the prosecutor and Yaqui's lawyer, and has only accepted the questioning of his lawyer. He admitted that he contacted her through Milanuncios, where she advertised herself as a caregiver, with the intention of hiring her. According to him, at that time he was going through a crisis with his wife and "contacted people to chat and paid them for the time" they spent together. What the police investigation and the accusations expose as a sexual assault, he has narrated as a "flirtation" with the woman he had just met for a job interview that, according to his version, ended with "kisses and caresses, all consensual."

The Mossos who took charge of the case also testified at the trial. The girl who wrote the report concluded that the man always followed one person modus operandi: In just one week, he contacted five women for whom separate and very similar cases to Yaqui's have been opened. In fact, the agents have explained that with another complainant, a similar situation occurred: he also contacted Milanuncios, picked her up at the metro station and took her home under the pretext of interviewing her for a job as his mother's caregiver.