They ask for 27 years in prison for a mosso for deceiving, raping and mistreating a young woman with a disability

BarcelonaThe police officer accused of deceiving his stepson's partner, taking advantage of her severe intellectual disability to rape her and obtain pornography, has not wished to provide any explanation. The accused —he has not lost his carefree attitude, nor his smile at times— has rejected his opportunity to give an exculpatory version in the trial where different witnesses have incriminated him over the last two days. The court has also reviewed the images and messages they exchanged with the girl until turning her into "a sexual slave," in the words of the prosecution.

One of the questions the judges will have to answer in the verdict is whether the girl was an adult and capable of consenting —as the defense claims— or if the accused took advantage of the victim's vulnerability to deceive her to the point where the manipulation left her unable to consent. "There was no capacity to consent to sexual relations due to the absolute inequality that existed," the prosecutor has argued. This deception would have been the result of "extreme planning over months," and now the accused, who is 60 years old, faces a sentence of 27 years in prison. The defense has requested an acquittal, alleging a supposed mental disorder, which the prosecution dismisses. "This person does not value the harm he does with his actions," the prosecutor said.

The victim ended up living with the accused because he was her boyfriend's father. The couple had met because they attended the same center for people with disabilities, and since both needed adult supervision for their day-to-day lives, it was common for the girl to spend many days at his house. In this context, the man would have made her believe that he had contacts who could help her access a massage academy where she wanted to train.

Both the Prosecutor's Office and the private prosecution reproach the man for using different numbers for a "Machiavellian game" in which he pretended to be different people who gave the girl instructions for supposed entrance exams to the academy, which consisted of accepting the sexual practices and humiliations demanded by the teacher of this school, who was actually the accused. "It was constant pressure," summarized the corporal of internal affairs of the Mossos who handled the case. He explained that the accused even faked conversations between two users in groups where the victim was also present, even though she did not participate in the conversation, so that she would find messages in which supposed classmates from the massage center normalized practices such as eating the accused's feces.

He knew how to hide

The internal affairs witness added that when the accused was active in the Mossos —he is now on provisional suspension— he used to analyze mobile phones and computers, and that's why he knew well what security measures to take so as not to be caught. The first call he made when he was in provisional prison was to his partner, and he asked her to tell his mother to close the Megaupload session she had open on her home computer. The corporal explained that this platform is known for not providing data to the police, and it is one of the most used by sexual offenders to store and share information. "With this I'm not saying she was sharing it, I'm saying she was using it. The moment she asks to close the session, she knows that we won't be able to enter," he states.

The defendant does not appear in any images with the girl, and all chats were automatically deleted after 24 hours. Even so, investigators have recovered some fragments through screenshots the girl took. The internal affairs officer also explained that the defendant "had had time to delete" files related to the victim because the day before he was reported, the girl's father had already confronted him when he found the messages that evidenced the assaults. On the other hand, when they searched his house, he still had on his computer images of assaults on an ex-partner and also on his then-partner's daughter, for which he has another trial. Even so, the corporal explained that they also confirmed that it was he who used all the WhatsApp numbers because, although everyone wrote in "perfect Catalan," he always made the same spelling mistake: instead of the pronoun em, he wrote hem.Even though the accused has not presented any exculpatory version before the trial ended, his lawyer has requested acquittal, largely by appealing to a supposed mental disorder. On the other hand, the forensic experts who examined him agree that he is in full faculties. "He understands the nature of the facts and that they can have legal consequences, especially considering his work, and he was able to plan his conduct," explained the professionals who conducted the psychological and psychiatric report. They see schizotypal and obsessive traits in the defendant, but they rule out that he could not understand reality or that the man did not realize that the girl's consent was not valid due to her disability: "He did understand it, another thing is the importance he gave it."