A policeman is sentenced to 21 years in prison for raping and humiliating a girl with a severe disability

BarcelonaThe Barcelona Court of Appeal has sentenced a mossos d'esquadra (Catalan police officer) to 21 years in prison for sexually assaulting and humiliating a young woman with a severe disability, whom he met because she was his stepson's girlfriend. The two young people had met in a center for people with disabilities, and they used to spend time with each other's families to the point where the victim and the accused lived together approximately half the week. The court convicts the officer for a crime of pornography by taking advantage of the girl's trust and for a crime of continued sexual assault by abusing the girl's mental disability.

According to the sentence, the man took advantage of the girl's vulnerability due to her mental disability, which made it difficult for her to perceive risk and, therefore, to consent to the humiliating sexual practices to which he subjected her. The man created an "elaborate deception" to make her believe that he could help her get into a massage academy, her dream profession. To do so, she had to pass a series of "tests".

The deception continued with two WhatsApp groups in which, using different phone numbers, the accused pretended to be people supposedly linked to the fake massage academy. In this way, he could play different characters, such as colleagues or the director of the academy, to convince her to engage in different sexual submission practices with the supposed professor, who was the accused, or to send him pornography. At the same time, he also sent her messages in his own name to manipulate and convince her.

Second pending case

Based on the messages, some sexual assaults have been proven that the convicted person had committed when the girl had stayed at the family's home. There are also messages in which the accused demanded that she send him naked videos and gave her instructions on how to make them. As ARA already explained, the agent has been provisionally suspended from the force and has another trial pending in which he is accused of drugging and raping another couple's daughter.

The conviction for this first case also imposes a restraining order against the victim, to whom he will have to pay 60,000 euros in compensation. It also disqualifies him from any work related to minors for fifteen years and, once he completes his prison sentence, he will have to spend eight more years on supervised release.