The Prosecutor’s Office requests 15 years in prison for a man accused of raping a girl with autism spectrum disorder in Vilanova i la Geltrú on July 14, 2024. The accused, F. d H., 49 years old and currently in preventive detention pending other trials for repeated thefts, was aware that he was a carrier of HIV and hepatitis C. The events occurred in the afternoon in a public space, and the girl stated in her testimony that she had told him her age, although he denies it. The victim took her own life a year later as a consequence of the events, according to the mother’s account at the hearing held this Friday.
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The 15-year sentence request from the public prosecutor is based on a continuous crime of sexual assault with penetration of a minor under 16 years old, with aggravating factors due to the victim’s age and disability. The events occurred when the girl, who had gone out for a walk, approached a group of people while they were playing the guitar. In her statement, the girl explained that she had consumed beer and marijuana with F. de H., after which he began to kiss her, eventually taking her to a more secluded place and forcing her to perform oral sex and then penetrating her vaginally. When he finished, he even told her that he had left “semen inside the vagina,” according to the victim’s statement in the investigative court.
After the events, the mother saw the girl going with the man towards the beach — “he took her to the beach because he said she was not feeling well,” she said he claimed — and reprimanded the man, warning him of the girl’s age and vulnerability. They went to her house and later, at dawn, the man contacted the girl again by phone through the WhatsApp application, and she left home without informing her mother. When the mother realized that the girl had left home, she went to look for her using a geolocation app. At that time, she was notified by an aunt who told her that the girl was with a pair of mossos d’esquadra. According to her statement, her daughter seemed “scared.” At one point, while they were in an ambulance heading to the hospital, the girl told her she had pain in her vagina and asked if they were going to do “a pregnancy test.” A witness claims to have seen the accused touching the girl.
The mother of the minor, who testified via videoconference and avoided hearing the aggressor’s statement, pointed out that following what happened on July 14, the girl’s “instability” increased, so she had to be admitted to a therapeutic center. There, she continued, the psychiatrist warned her that the victim was “completely devastated” and began to suffer visual and auditory hallucinations, with recurring “self-harming and suicidal thoughts.”
In response to the defense lawyer’s questions, the mother explained that the fact that the girl left home alone was an issue they were working on with the therapist, “because it was a need” she had in moments of blockage. She also explained that the minor had problems with “social decoding” to know with whom she could and could not relate.
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”Weird and dizzy”
The accused omitted in his statement any account of sexual assault and simply said about the relations: “We both hooked up,” claiming he believed she was of legal age and that he was surprised — “I freaked out,” he declared — when they told him she was not even 14 years old. The victim’s father, visibly emotional, was present throughout the session in the Barcelona Courtroom where the hearing was held.
In her qualification report, the prosecutor highlighted that the girl was “a vulnerable minor” and that the relations occurred once, as she stated, she felt “weird and dizzy,” and despite the girl asking the accused to stop his actions. “The accused knew about the girl’s vulnerable state,” she emphasized. The lawyer representing the victim’s parents highlighted that the expert reports noted the “panic” state the girl was in and the “feelings of guilt” following what happened and the fact that he abused her without a condom.
On the other hand, the defense lawyer claimed that the accused did not know the victim’s age and denied that any sexual relations or touching occurred during the second meeting, so he requested a sentence reduction. He requested acquittal or, alternatively, sentences of two to eight years in prison.
