#NOisNO
"NO is NO"
“It is so dissapointing to see one of the oldest civilizations in the world still stuck in 15th century in the ages of the conquistadores and the barbaric things they did to minorities around the world.”
A group of friends who call themselves “La Manada” (The Herd in Spanish), raped an 18-year-old woman from Madrid on the first day of the San Fermin 2016 celebrations. They took the girl to an alley, rapped her 17 times, and at the same published the horrendous act in the social networks.
This last week judges decided to charge them with “sexual abuse” instead of sexual aggression, violent assault and crimes against intimacy because the woman didn't fight back and did not seem intimidated, and therefore the judge argued that the crime wasn't a violent abuse.
"It's clear that you weren't in pain during the events,” said judge Ricardo Gonzalez, who wanted to completely absolve the attackers.
“I closed eyes... I wasn't speaking, I wasn't doing anything. I was submitting with my eyes closed... All I did was submitting to them. I submitted to them and did everything they told me to do,” she said at the interrogation.
Public and private prosecutors were demanding between 22 and 25 years of prison for Jose Angel Prenda, Angel Boza Florido, Jesus Escudero Dominguez, Alfonso Jesus Cabezuelo and Antonio Manuel Guerrero Escudero, while they demanded complete absolution.
At the end, the court in Navarra sentenced a group of Spanish friends to nine years in prison for the lesser crime of sexual abuse, clearing them of rape charges that would have put them behind the bars for more than 20 years, with the claim that the girl wasn't really raped by the five men who forced themselves on her.
The judge, who did not give the reasoning behind the sentence, also ordered the men to pay the victim 50,000 euros, about US$60,825, in damages.
People gathered outside the court chanting “It's rape, not abuse” and “I do believe you” in protest of the ruling, with their hands painted in red as a symbol of sexual aggression.
Feminist groups and women rights groups are at this time protesting in Spanish cities around the country, including outside the Justice Ministry in Madrid, in reaction to the sentence. "If five people surrounding a girl is not aggression, the question has to be what is wrong with our penal code?" former Secretary of State for Equality Soledad Murillo said in comments published in El Pais newspaper.
Ricardo Gonzalez (the judge) wanted to absolve all five friends of the sexual abuse charges, while only recognizing one of them had stolen the girl's mobile phone.
However, women rights groups continue to warn that the Spanish judicial system still favors a male-dominated society in which women’s cries for equality falls on deaf ears in most cases.
Keep fighting,
Sarah_do