A 29-year-old man has been sentenced by the Court of Alicante to 14 years and six months in prison for raping and beating his sentimental partner in Callosa de Segura, whom he met up with, despite a restraining order for a previous crime of injury in the field of sexist violence and was prohibited from approaching less than 300 metres.
The offence dealt with by the courts this week occurred in February 2021. The court considers it proven that the accused made an appointment and met the victim, knowing that the prohibition to approach her was still in force.
The man said that he was going to give her dog food, but once they were there together he took her mobile phone, “threatened her with a whip, grabbed her by the neck and hit her with a stick, saying he was going to kill her if she didn’t do what he wanted” until the sexual assault was completed and then he forced her to accompany him to the home where they had lived together after warning her that “if you mess up along the way, I’ll kill you”, the court heard.
The next day, he forced her to go to the Orihuela courts “watching her at all times”, so that the court for violence against women would withdraw a previous complaint that she had filed against him, but at that moment, she took the opportunity to ask for help, resulting in the arrest of the defendant, who was in the vicinity of the Palace of Justice.
At the trial, the defendant only admitted that he had been communicating with his ex-partner through telephone messages and that she had expressed her intention to withdraw the complaint. In addition, he stated that they had arranged to see each other and that, later, they both went to the house where she lived where they had consensual sexual relations.
The court, however, confers all credibility to the victim’s testimony due to the persistence and the details offered in all her statements throughout the investigation in a sentence that underlines that the facts were also corroborated by the version offered by two police officers from Orihuela who carried out the arrest, along with two others from the National Police who interviewed the victim.
The sentence does not consider it proven that the accused held the victim against her will and that he did not let her leave the home during the whole night from February 2 to 3, 2021, for which he resolves his acquittal regarding the crime of illegal detention, but it does oblige him to compensate the victim with 250 euro for injuries and another 12,000 for moral damages.
