The Córdoba County Court’s third division has handed down a sentence totaling 65 years of imprisonment to six defendants involved in a shocking case where a 12-year-old girl was forced into marriage, ultimately relocating to La Coruña. The judges described the facts as proven during the hearing held at the City of Justice in Córdoba at the end of last June, and the defendants did not dispute the core allegations at that time.
The sentences are severe for offenses that include sexual assault and human trafficking. The most substantial portions of the penalty will be borne by the victim’s mother, the spouse of the minor, and the aunt of the girl, each receiving 17 and a half years in prison for sexual crimes and trafficking offenses. A second emotional blow comes in the form of a five-year sentence for the mother’s partner and the minor’s uncle, both convicted on charges that included trafficking. The younger brother of the person who married the girl will serve two and a half years for complicity in trafficking.
According to Cordopolis, which obtained the information from the Andalusian High Court of Justice, the ruling notes that the girl remained under the protection of the Junta de Andalucía after the events, and the minor who married the girl was later found to have died in La Coruña after being convicted of sexual assault and currently serving a sentence there. The events took place when the girl was 17 years old in March 2021.
The text of the verdict states clearly that the girl was coerced into a forced marriage with the aim of legitimizing the marriage, a debt of 4,000 euros was involved, and the victim’s mother and the husband shared a debt with the girl’s uncles to whom the marriage was arranged. The mother of the victim and the brother of the groom moved to Córdoba for the wedding, contributing to a complex network of influence and control surrounding the arrangement.
Before the ceremony could proceed under the family’s own protocols, the girl endured rape by her future husband in a crude attempt to verify her virginity. When she resisted, she was detained by her aunt and by the future mother-in-law, a sequence that the court described as deeply coercive. The decision indicates that the mother of the girl witnessed the sexual assault and that she could have withdrawn consent to halt the procedure, yet she did not, a factor the court highlighted as critical in understanding the dynamics of the exploitation that followed.
After the wedding, the girl was moved to La Coruña, where she was deprived of her passport and birth certificate, effectively imprisoning her within the household. Weeks later, Córdoba’s Judicial Police’s provincial brigade conducted a search at the address and located the minor. The trial included special accusations brought by the Andalusian Junta and the Public Prosecutor, with both public and administrative authorities involved in pursuing accountability for the acts described in the indictment.