Outrage as Spanish men cleared of rape after taking it in turns to force 14-year-old girl to have sex

Spanish women expressed anger on Thursday after a gang of men were cleared of raping a 14-year-old girl they took turns to have sex with in an abandoned factory. 

Five men from the city of Manresa in Catalonia were sentenced to between 10 and 12 years in prison for the lesser offence of sexual abuse, while two were acquitted of all accusations, despite one of them having watched the assaults while masturbating. 

The victim had told the court that her memory of the events was hazy after drinking alcohol, but she said she felt “intimidated” and that she “had to do it” because the men were handling a pistol, which later turned out to be a blank gun.

Psychologists who had treated the victim for trauma backed up the girl’s evidence, and another girl who had been present confirmed that the men had taken turns to rape the victim inside a shed.

The case is reminiscent of the so-called ‘Wolf Pack’ gang rape of a young woman during Pamplona’s San Fermín bull-running festival in 2016, which saw huge protests against the original trial verdict finding the five men guilty of sexual abuse, and not rape with intimidation or violence. 

This year Spain’s Supreme Court convicted the five Wolf Pack members of rape, arguing that the “atmosphere of intimidation” created by the men when they surrounded their victim in an enclosed space was sufficiently violent to accredit the more serious offence.

The court in Manresa found that in 2016 the victim had drunk alcohol with the men in the old factory, leading to the girl becoming intoxicated to the point of unconsciousness.

According to the verdict: “She did not know what she was doing and, therefore, could not decide whether to accept or oppose the sexual relations she had with the majority of the accused, who were able to carry out those sexual acts without using any kind of violence or intimidation”.

“This verdict is unacceptable because it says there was no intimidation when the girl was in a completely defenceless situation. It treats sex attackers with benevolence and lacks any kind of gender perspective,” Altamira Gonzalo, vice-president of the Themis women jurists’ association in Spain told The Telegraph.   

Spain’s deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, said the government respected court decisions, but reaffirmed her Socialist party’s intention to reform the law so that any act of penetration without consent would be considered rape.