The first section of the Provincial Court of the Balearic Islands has sentenced J.L.L, a 51-year-old Spaniard, to 34 years in prison for using his underage stepdaughter as a sexual and domestic slave for more than five years on a rural estate in the Mallorcan town of Algaida. The man has been sentenced to ten years in prison for a crime of human trafficking for servitude, 14 years for a continuous crime of sexual assault on a minor under 16 years old, seven years for producing child pornography, and three years for a crime against privacy.
Additionally, he will have to compensate the victim with 300,000 euros for psychological and moral damage, as the judges consider that, from the proven facts in the sentence, to which EL PAÍS has had access, damage of an “extremely high intensity” to the dignity and the rights to freedom, privacy, and self-determination of the victim can be inferred. The account of the proven facts in the sentence is devastating and accepts the minor’s account, which during the closed-door trial was corroborated by witnesses and the abundant documentary evidence collected against the accused.
The victim’s nightmare began in March 2015 when J.L.L. traveled to Nigeria with a friend, who turned out to be the victim’s aunt. Both traveled to the woman’s hometown, where her sister still lived with her three minor daughters, who hosted both in their home. The victim’s mother (7 years old at the time) was a single mother and was going through a difficult financial situation.
During those days, J.L.L. began to devise a plan with the purpose of turning the minor into his domestic and sexual slave, stripping her of her family and promising to house her in his home in Mallorca, where the girl was later forced to satisfy all the accused’s sexual desires and perform all domestic chores.
The man promised the minor that he would take her out of poverty and that he would be “her human God” while enchanting her by showing her photographs of the island. “The minor, who had never before met a Caucasian person, was absolutely captivated by the improvement in quality of life that the accused proposed to her, developing a strong emotional dependence on him,” the sentence states.
During that March 2015, the convicted man proposed marriage to the minor’s mother to obtain a visa so that both could travel to Spain, with J.L.L. adopting the role of the girl’s “father.” The man promised the minor’s mother that he would take care of the girl’s food and education and also assured her that once settled on the island, he would process the visas for the other two daughters she had in Nigeria.
The woman accepted, and they finally married in what turned out to be a merely formal union with the sole intention of obtaining the necessary documentation to travel to Spain. The procedures to obtain the visas extended until 2019, a time during which the convicted man regularly traveled to Nigeria to maintain contact with the minor, whom he began to touch at that time, with the intensity increasing over the years.
Additionally, the man began showing the minor pornographic videos featuring minors, which caused the victim to normalize these situations “as normal and habitual practices,” assimilating them as a necessary act to escape poverty in Nigeria and as gratitude to the person she considered “her savior.”
As part of his plan to have total control over the minor, he also gave her a mobile phone to maintain an open line of communication. In the conversations, the convicted man asked the girl, who was between 8 and 11 years old, for sexual photographs and videos, which the minor agreed to “due to the full admiration she felt for him.” On one of the last trips to Nigeria in 2019, J.L.L told the girl that if she wanted to travel with him to Spain, she had to sign a document written in English committing to have daily sexual relations and perform all domestic chores. “The minor was convinced that this way she would be rescued from poverty and would also ensure that her two younger sisters would be rescued in the future, and therefore accepted the conditions,” the judges reason.
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The accused arrived in Mallorca with the mother and daughter in November 2019 and already at the airport told the woman that he would be exclusively responsible for the care of the girl and that she would have to find accommodation elsewhere. “In this way, J.L.L managed to completely sever and uproot the minor from all her family and social ties, becoming the only reference person in her life.” He took the minor to a rural estate between November 2019 and March 2024, a period during which the victim was between 12 and 17 years old. A few days after arriving, the man drew up a second contract in which the minor committed to having daily sexual relations and not leaving him on the condition of bringing her sisters to the island. “In public, he acted as the minor’s father, enrolling her in high school, handling administrative procedures, and providing basic care,” the sentence recounts, noting that the convicted man allowed the girl to see her mother and some friends “always under strict control and supervision.”
“During the time the minor was a sexual and domestic slave of J.L.L, he had sexual relations with the minor almost daily,” the judges state, noting that the man raped the girl even while she was asleep. In addition to these assaults, the man constantly requested that she provide him with sexual photographs and videos, even with friends. The convicted man had full access to the victim’s device, her WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram accounts to control her conversations. He also installed surveillance cameras inside and outside the house, constantly recording the girl, who was unaware of it.
The minor managed to report what happened in March 2024 when she revealed to her mother the sexual assaults the man had been subjecting her to. “It is difficult to imagine what the victim suffered,” the judges state, giving full credibility to the minor’s account, in which they find no “spurious motives” during her testimony, which they consider “coherent” with a “spontaneous and detailed” account of what happened.
For the court, the minor’s confession is peripherally corroborated by the multitude of witnesses who testified during the trial, from family and friends to psychologists and law enforcement officers. The sentence also highlights the multitude of evidentiary elements against the accused, who kept videos, photographs, and messages with the victim and even wrote a “deeply humiliating” account from the beginning of the story with the girl, which he himself acknowledged during the trial.
“Everything narrated has produced devastating and deeply serious effects on the minor, especially in her psychological and social spheres, which are expected to last throughout the rest of her life.” The court points out that the minor’s beliefs and mental frameworks, especially in the area of personal and sexual relationships, have been severely distorted “not corresponding to reality.”
The victim has developed suicidal thoughts, engaged in self-harming behaviors, suffered severe anxiety, constant emotional overwhelm, a deep emotional dependence on others, and the comments the convicted man made about her body caused her to suffer eating disorders from the age of 13.
The phone number 016 assists victims of gender-based violence, their families, and their environment 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not recorded on the phone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. Contact can also be made via email 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and WhatsApp at 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation phone at 900 20 20 10. In an emergency, call 112 or the National Police (091) and Civil Guard (062) numbers. If calling is not possible, the ALERTCOPS app can be used to send an alert signal to the police with geolocation.
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