The Supreme Court has sentenced the Minister for Equality, Irene Montero, to pay 18,000 euros to the ex-husband of MarÃa Sevilla, the former president of Infancia Libre, who was pardoned by the Government, for accusing him of being an “abuser”, despite having been acquitted For justice. Rafael Marcos decided to go ahead with the lawsuit after Montero refused to attend a conciliation act.
The Civil Chamber of the High Court has partly upheld the claim, having assessed the violation of the plaintiff’s right to honor, as a consequence of the words pronounced, on May 25, 2022, at the inauguration ceremony of the new headquarters of the Instituto de las Mujeres, and the publicity given to those on their account on the social network Twitter.
The sentence to pay the plaintiff 18,000 euros and to disseminate the sentence. In its justification, the Supreme Court declares that honor is a fundamental right that protects against attacks on personal reputation, which is affected when behaviors deserving of maximum social reproach are attributed to a person.
The Chamber appreciates the existence of a violation of the right to honor and rejects Montero’s arguments that it is protected by “parliamentary inviolability” as well as that the expressions did not specifically identify the plaintiff.
In the conflict between the fundamental right to freedom of expression and the right to honour, the Chamber considers that it violates personal reputation to unfoundedly attribute to a person the status of abuser. As for freedom of expression, although it protects opinions or subjective judgments that, as such, are outside the factual demonstration, this does not mean that it should not have some facts that serve as a foundation.
For the Chamber, the right to honor prevails when “outrageous or offensive” phrases and expressions are used, unrelated to the ideas or opinions that are exposed and, therefore, unnecessary for this purpose, since the Constitution does not recognize an alleged right to insult.
In the specific case, since there is no judicial resolution that allows us to conclude that the ex-husband from Seville is the perpetrator of episodes of gender or domestic violence, nor the perpetrator of sexual abuse in the person of his son, the attribution of facts of that nature lacks any objective factual basis that allows sustaining them with the minimum required rigor.
“The expressions that are judged are not generic, but from the context and their literalness it can be deduced that the plaintiff is being alluded to and that acts constituting sexist violence are attributed to him,” the sentence states.
The stated reason for the partial pardon of the plaintiff’s ex-partner is to be a protective mother who defends her son from sexist violence, for which reason episodes of such violence are attributed to her son’s father. However, the pardon stems from the crime of child abduction committed by the former, with no externalized connection to gender violence, alleging generic reasons of “justice and equity.”
In addition, the magistrates warn that Montero’s words have been duly prepared, are not the result of haste or immediacy typical of the answer to a question that does not allow delay and, in addition, are incorporated into a page of a social network of which the minister is headed.
“This could not ignore that the recipients would associate the pardoned with the status of victim of gender violence. The appreciation of the violation of the plaintiff’s right to honor determines the sentence of the defendant to pay compensation for non-material damage that the First Chamber prudently sets at 18,000 euros.
