Saul Gordillo avoids jail time: Judge approves plea deal for second sexual assault

BarcelonaJournalist Saúl Gordillo will not go to prison. Barcelona's 20th Criminal Court has validated the plea bargain between the former director of Catalunya Ràdio, the Public Prosecutor's Office, and the private prosecution, who agreed on a sentence of one and a half years in prison for the sexual assault of the then director of the digital media outlet. The Principal perpetrated against a worker on December 1, 2022, after a company dinner.

Accepting this sentence means that the journalist assumes responsibility for the sexual assault he committed in the early hours of the morning inside his car, when he offered to take the worker to her home in Badalona. As agreed by the three parties, and following the compliance hearing held this Monday morning, the sentence has been suspended: Gordillo will not go to prison if he does not commit any new crimes for four years, participates in sex education programs, and does not approach or communicate with the second of the victims.

"The content is expressly accepted by the accused and his lawyer, as well as by the private prosecution," says the text of the Prosecutor's Office that the court has validated. The agreement also includes compensation of 30,000 euros for the victim in the form of moral damages and establishes a period of two years of supervised release, a two-year ban from working with minors, and a five-and-a-half-year restraining order against him. Initially, the prosecutor's office sought four years in prison for the former director of Catalunya Ràdio, who was accused of sexually assaulting a female employee who showed "obvious symptoms of being influenced by the consumption of alcoholic beverages." According to the prosecutor's brief, the young woman was "unable to react" due to the state she was in after drinking alcohol during a night out with her colleagues and also due to the ingestion of benzodiazepines.

This is the second conviction for sexual assault against the journalist who collaborated withThe Punt Avui, who had initially denied both accusations. Such as the ARA advanced, On the same night of December 1, he attacked another journalist, aged 23, in this case inside the Sala Apolo in Barcelona. He was then director ofThe Principal, a new media outlet where the two victims worked, attacked the girl while they were at the bar of the nightclub. Beforehand, during the taxi ride to the nightclub, Gordillo, who was 50 years old, sat in the back with the editor and praised her work on gender issues and feminism: "I'm learning a lot from you. I'm deconstructing myself." For this first cause, the former director of ACN has alreadywas sentencedto one year in prison.