Outrage in Spain after men accused of raping girl convicted of lesser crime
- A court’s decision to acquit five men accused of gang-raping an unconscious 14-year-old girl of the charge of sexual assault has sparked anger
- Spain’s laws must be changed to define rape as all sex without consent, as is the case in most other European nations, an activist said
A Barcelona court on Thursday ruled out the more serious charge of sexual assault – the legal equivalent of rape in Spain – on the grounds that the victim was in an “unconscious state” from drugs and alcohol and the accused had not used “any type of violence or intimidation” in the attack.
The five men were each given 10 to 12 years in prison. A conviction for sexual assault would have carried jail sentences of 15 to 20 years.
Two other defendants were acquitted of involvement in the attack, which took place in October 2016 at a party at an abandoned factory in the town of Manresa in the northeastern region of Catalonia.
“The problem is not the verdict, it’s the criminal code,” said Montserrat Comas of the progressive Judges for Democracy association in Catalonia. That code states that intimidation or violence must be proven for a person to be convicted of rape,
She told news radio Cadena Ser that Spain’s laws must be changed to define rape as all sex without consent, as is the case in most other European nations and as required by Istanbul Convention, an international treaty on preventing and combating violence against women, which Madrid ratified in 2014.