The Supreme Court upheld the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Valencian Community (TSJCV) that refused to reopen the case against Luis Eduardo Ramírez Icardi, a staff member at a children’s center who was previously convicted of sexual abuse of a minor under the Generalitat’s supervision. The events occurred between late 2016 and early 2017. Ramírez Icardi was married to Mónica Oltra at the time, though they continued to share a home. Oltra, meanwhile, held the role of vice-president of the Valencian Government and served as Minister for Equality.
The educator received a five-year prison sentence for the abuse. He sought a new examination of the case in 2019 and again in 2021, when a different court than the Valencia Court’s second division partially revisited the matter and convicted him. The aim was to include two Equity reports that questioned the credibility of the minor’s testimony. Ramírez Icardi’s defense also asked that the partial replay be annulled to safeguard the right to defense.
Rejecting every argument
The Supreme Court rejected all of these arguments and confirmed the sentence originally handed down by TSJCV judges Carlos Climent, Antonio Ferrer and Carmen Llombart, as well as the verdict issued by the Valencia Court’s second division judges. The panel included Dolores Hernández Rueda, Sandra Schuller Ramos and José María Gómez Villora (the presiding judge).
The court acknowledged that a partial annulment of the trial was a sensitive decision. It is not explicitly foreseen in current procedure law, yet it is not excluded. In this case, the TSJ chose a partial annulment to preserve the validity of the tests already conducted, aiming to prevent secondary victimization of the minor witness. The court described the minor as a young woman who had grown up facing emotional instability and a disrupted family life that led to institutional care in several settings.
Supreme Court justices stated that it was neither appropriate nor useful for the minor to testify again, as the now-convicted man had requested. Regarding the minor’s testimony itself, the court noted that it appeared to contain contradictions and inaccuracies that could weaken its evidentiary value due to vagueness in dates or other specifics, describing it as an instance where precise statements were difficult to make. Nonetheless, the judges affirmed that the core allegations remained potent enough to support guilt when considered together with the surrounding evidence.
They explained that it is natural for minors to have imperfect recall of locations, dates, and sequences of events because of the trauma involved, fear, and the long arc of memory under distress. The court emphasized that this does not erase the seriousness of the acts or the overall evidentiary force of the testimony when evaluated in context and with corroborating elements. The decisions underscored the societal priority of protecting minors while upholding due process and the integrity of the judicial process. [Source: Supreme Court decision, case file summary]