Spain’s supreme court has overturned a controversial verdict in a case of sexual assault which had drawn a huge social backlash and put the country’s judiciary under scrutiny.
The court ruled on Friday that five men who were convicted last year of sexual abuse for an attack on a woman in 2016 are instead guilty of rape. Their jail sentences were increased from nine years to 15 years.
The highly anticipated ruling was welcomed by many, including prime minister Pedro Sánchez. “It was rape,” he tweeted. “The decision of the supreme court …confirms it.”
The defendants had met the victim, who was 18 when the attack took place, during the running of the bulls festival in Pamplona, in the early hours of the morning. They led the woman to the lobby of a building, where they undressed her and each had intercourse with her. One of them recorded some of the encounter on his mobile phone.
Social backlash
The victim informed the police and all five men were arrested on charges of rape, which they denied. In the ensuing trial last year, they were given nine-year sentences for sexual abuse, but all five were cleared of rape due to the court’s determination that neither violence nor intimidation had been used.
That ruling drew a huge social backlash, with feminist groups taking to the streets to complain that the justice system was tilted against victims in such cases. The outrage fed into a broader campaign for women’s rights in Spain.
The men have become known as La Manada (or “the Wolf Pack”), a nickname they gave a WhatsApp group they shared. All five have been free on bail in recent months.
Both the defendants and the victim appealed the sentence, as did state prosecutors, who requested a rape verdict and 18-year jail terms for the accused. On Friday, lawyers from both sides argued their cases again.
‘Atmosphere of terror’
“They weren’t five wolves surrounding a girl,” Agustín Martínez, lawyer for the defence, told the supreme court. “All she had to do was say no.”
But Víctor Sarasa, one of the prosecuting lawyers, said: “All the acts took place in an atmosphere of terror, of absolute subjection in which the only thing the victim declared [to the court] was, ‘I closed my eyes and waited for all that to end as soon as possible.’”
One of the defendants, Antonio Manuel Guerrero, a civil guard, was given a total jail sentence of 17 years, because he also stole the victim’s phone. All five defendants were arrested in Seville shortly after the new verdict was announced.
It was widely believed that if the previous sentence had been upheld then another wave of protests would have followed, this time against the supreme court.
Pablo Iglesias, leader of the leftist Podemos party, said the court’s decision would not have been possible without the campaigning of feminist groups in recent months. “The Wolf Pack was not abuse, it was rape,” he tweeted. “Millions of women said on that the streets ‘I believe you’ and finally the judiciary has listened to them.”
