Updated November 02, Women's rights campaigners in Spain have called for a change in the law after a court in Barcelona cleared five men of raping a year-old girl and jailed them on the lesser charge of sexual abuse, ruling that they did not use violence.
The men, who denied the charges, took turns to have sex with the teenager after a party in Manresa, a town to the north of Barcelona, in October , the court heard.
On Thursday they were sentenced to between 10 and 12 years in jail for sexual abuse, avoiding more serious charges of rape or sexual assault because the court said the girl was drunk and unconscious, did not fight back and the men were not violent. Ada Colau, the mayor of Barcelona, took to social media to express her anger at the verdict, saying it was "outrageous" and the result of a patriarchal judicial system. The verdict has reignited a debate over the Spanish judiciary's treatment of women, which intensified with the "Wolf Pack" case, in which an year-old woman was gang-raped during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona.
The men, who included a former policeman and a former soldier, shared videos of the incident in a WhatsApp group and joked about it afterwards. In June, Spain's Supreme Court ruled the five accused were guilty of rape, not the lesser crime of sexual abuse, increasing their sentence to 15 years rather than the nine years they had been given for sexual abuse by a regional court.
Outrage and protests over the initial verdict prompted a government promise to change the law, but critics say the Manresa case shows how the penal code is still outdated. Spanish law requires that the plaintiff in a rape case must present evidence of intimidation or specific violence. Topics: law-crime-and-justice , sexual-offences , courts-and-trials , spain.
