"My crime is very serious, it's not a mistake. I must be punished and I have to go back to jail."

BarcelonaOn January 8, Èric will return to Lledoners prison, where he had already spent two years in pretrial detention for sexually assaulting a minor. He has just over two weeks of freedom left after the Barcelona Provincial Court ratified the plea agreement on December 3, sentencing him to six and a half years in prison.

"My crime is very serious, it's not a mistake. I must be punished, and I have to go back to prison," acknowledges this man, now nearing forty. Èric—a pseudonym—doesn't hide what he did. He admits he caused a great deal of pain, not only to the victim—a very close relative—but also to his own son, his ex-partner, and everyone around him. That's why, in 2024, when his pretrial detention was reevaluated and the court considered him eligible for release from Lledoners, he himself requested to remain behind bars.

However, he was released because there was no risk of recidivism. And, just over two weeks ago, when the trial was held, the presiding judge himself reminded him that he could plead not guilty. "I can't deny what I've done," he replied, aware of the implications of his words. "I want to live, I want to be honest. I wish it hadn't happened. I dream that this didn't happen! But it did," he recounts with pain.

He hasn't always thought this way. At first, he fell into despair. As happens with most sex offenders, he minimized the events; he was the victim. Èric has seen and spoken about this inside the Lledoners prison module where those convicted of sexual violence live together. "90% of those in the prison yard consider themselves innocent, but if there are 105, all 105 have committed a crime," he says. It was a long period of darkness. "He knew how, when, and where he would get rid of me," he confesses. But they saved his life. His psychologist at the prison, Cristina, held him in time. The hand he needed to survive. "She told me, 'Do you want your son to have a criminal father or no father at all? Do you want your son to live with these doubts his whole life? Because you're a coward,'" she snapped. This broke him. He had to start working, and little by little, "he stopped denying and hiding," and he vomited out everything he'd been holding inside.

And he did it to try to get his son back. For now, he can't see him, although he has filed an appeal to be able to spend time with him, even if it's with "70 psychologists present" supervising the visits. "In the civil sphere, consider that I am a monster and a perill for my fill. The stigma, the label, the acceptance, but should it condition the rest of my life? Should it prevent me from embracing my fill? Vaig is a horrible thing, it is certain, but I am a good person. I am not a perfect parent, I am a parent. "fosc, but I've been the best I've ever been," he reflects while cursing those moments that he denied to his son because he was working. Now he is aware that "when he sees him again," the child "will no longer want to play" because it will be in another stage of his life.

The origin

"Christmas isn't a happy time for me," he admits. The question about the holidays he'll be able to spend at home before walking through the gates of Lledoners prison again leaves him unsettled. It's not the imminent return to prison that troubles him. It's his past, when he was a teenager discovering his sexuality. It was during that time that he suffered a trauma and a very painful loss that marked him for life. His sexuality, too. This is where the darkness began. He came from a very religious family and associated the loss with divine punishment. The discovery of his homosexuality was wrong. This led him to take refuge in a fabricated sexuality. He met the mother of his child and they built a life together. "For many years my heterosexual life was perfect, while what I liked couldn't be because it wasn't right," he summarizes, looking back. It was all a facade.

Until the assault. On a relative half his age. "I destroyed his trust, I blew it up," he laments bluntly. "You draw a red line and say, 'I won't cross this,' and one day you cross that red line, but you tell yourself, 'It's not that bad,' and you raise it again, and that's a vicious cycle that must be stopped. When someone has to close a door to do something, it means that what they're doing is, what they're doing is harming the minor.

Èric isn't trying to justify himself. Nor is he trying to whitewash what he did. Nor does Àngel Blau, the organization he went to the same day he left Lledoners prison, allow him to. The organization brings victims and perpetrators together in the same space. So that the perpetrators can see the pain of their actions. A mirror in which they see themselves reflected.

Although he considers "forgiveness" to be "selfish" on the part of the perpetrator, Éric asks his victim again and again: "For all the harm I've caused you, for having betrayed you, "For having ruined his life." Gemma, a victim of sexual violence when she was a minor and the public face of Àngel Blau, with whom Èric has forged a close bond, qualifies her words: "It's impossible to forgive the acts, they will never be forgiven, but we need that genuine forgiveness." A forgiveness that not all aggressors ask for: there are perpetrators who will never allow themselves to be helped and will always live in darkness.

After the assaults, the minor maintained a very close relationship with Èric because he was a figure of utmost trust. He continued "embracing" him, continued "loving" him. Until, when he was already of legal age, he had enough strength to detach himself from that figure who had failed him. "We cannot forgive the acts, but we continue to love the person who perpetrated them." “Living with this ambivalence is very hard,” reflects Gemma, who insists that society should talk more about “incest” and all that it implies.

The complaint and the legal process that began in 2022 led to his imprisonment, and from there another Èric emerged. “Your monsters are always there. They are a reminder of what you did, but now they no longer control me, they no longer scare me, they no longer suffocate me,” he argues.

The red line

The goal of Àngel Blau—and also of Èric, who shares his story—is to prevent further cases of abuse. This includes protecting the victims who participate in the sessions, despite the pain they may feel looking into the eyes of an aggressor or pedophile. They want to reach younger people, those who consume child pornography but have not yet committed any acts of aggression, so they can seek help from specialists in time. This article also aims to raise awareness of the problem without justifying or validating the behavior and arguments of someone convicted of sexual violence against minors.