A 59-year-old man agreed to serve sentences totaling up to seventeen and a half years in prison in Alicante Court this Wednesday after admitting to sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl over a six year period. He is the partner’s grandson and faced charges for the offense of producing child pornography, including nude photographs and videos of the minor. Prosecution and special prosecutors, represented by lawyer Catalina Alcazar on behalf of the victim’s family, originally sought twenty two and twenty four years in prison for the accused. However, a plea agreement reduced the total term to twelve years and six months for the continuation crime of sexual assault after the defendant pleaded guilty during the hearing. The case also involved charges of assault on a child under sixteen and five related counts of child pornography.
The accused was ordered to pay the girl fifty thousand euros in compensation for emotional harm suffered. He faces a decade of probation after serving the prison term, during which he will be prohibited from approaching or communicating with the victim in any manner.
The facts under trial emerged in December 2021 from a discussion about bullying and cyberbullying presented by the National Police at a school in Alicante. The victim, who was ten when the sexual assault was first reported, cried during the police presentation and approached officers after the interview to recount what had occurred with her grandmother’s partner.
six years of abuse
The defendant maintained a romantic relationship with the girl’s grandmother for six years and exploited the child’s trust during the period when she continued to sleep, to satisfy his sexual desires. In addition to abusing her, he took candid photos and even recorded her naked in the bathroom. The abuse spanned six years, and after the girl reported the abuse to authorities, officers moved quickly to arrest him.
When the accused appeared before the Alicante Court for the hearing, photographs of underage girls with explicit content and images showing the minor’s face in photomontages were found in his possession. Some of these materials depicted the minor’s face placed on the bodies of adult women engaged in sexual activity.
The minor, who suffered sustained sexual abuse over several years, has developed symptoms consistent with a posttraumatic stress disorder and continues to experience moderate distress with intermittent episodes that recur when memories of the abuse arise. The prosecutor and the special prosecutor noted that due to the child’s young age, other future issues could emerge, such as heightened anxiety, lower self-esteem, or social withdrawal, and emphasized the need for ongoing support and monitoring.