Madrid: Feminist groups have announced protests across Spain after five men accused of the gang rape of a teenager during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona were found guilty of the lesser charge of sexual abuse.
The attack two years ago prompted an outcry across Spain, as did the subsequent trial, which was widely criticised as a cross-examination of the 18-year-old woman rather than the men who attacked her.
The verdicts were delivered on Thursday at a court in Navarre, northern Spain. Jose Angel Prenda, Alfonso Cabezuelo, Antonio Manuel Guerrero, Jesus Escudero and Angel Boza, were sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment, five years’ probation and ordered to pay €10,000 (Dh44,752) each to the woman. Guerrero was also fined €900 (Dh4,000) for stealing her phone after the attack.
The verdicts drew immediate criticism across Spain. Protesters in Pamplona shouted: “This justice is bullshit! “It’s not abuse, it’s rape!” and “If they touch one of us, they touch all of us!”. A demonstration is due to be held outside the justice ministry in Madrid at 8pm on Thursday.
The men were found guilty of a “continuous sexual abuse” of the woman in the lobby of a building in the early hours of 7 July 2016, but the judges decided they had not committed a violent sexual assault. One of the judges argued that the men should have been cleared of all charges except the phone theft.
The men, who called themselves la manada [“the wolf pack”] in their WhatsApp group, had offered to walk the woman to her car but instead took her into the hall of a building, attacked her and filmed the assault on their phones.
The victim was later found crying on a bench. She described her attackers to police, who arrested the five men the following day.
Their defence lawyers claimed the woman had consented and had let one of the man kiss her. They also argued that 96 seconds of video footage from the men’s phones - showing the woman immobile and with her eyes shut during the attack - was proof of consent.
However, the prosecution said the victim had been too terrified to move.
“The defendants want us to believe that on that night they met an 18-year-old girl, living a normal life, who, after 20 minutes of conversation with people she didn’t know, agreed to group sex involving every type of penetration, sometimes simultaneously, without using a condom,” the prosecutor Elena Sarasate said.
If the sex was consensual why had they taken her phone, Sarasate asked. “The obvious thing would be to exchange phone numbers, not steal her phone.”
The proceedings were also criticised after the judges accepted into evidence a report compiled by a private detective hired by some of the defendants. The detective had followed the woman over several days and produced photographs of her smiling with friends.
This was presented as evidence that she had not suffered any lasting trauma, prompting hundreds of women to demonstrate outside court holding signs reading: “We believe you, sister.”
Thursday’s verdict came after five months of deliberation by judges. Prosecutors had sought jail terms of 22 years each.
In a tweet posted shortly after the verdicts were read out, Spain’s national police force wrote: “No means no” 12 times, along with their emergency phone number and the message: “We’re with you.”
