The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court (TS) has sentenced a teacher from a school in Mallorca to 12 years in prison for inappropriately touching four students between 2016 and 2018. The man, who taught mathematics to secondary school students, has been charged of groping three 12-year-old students and a fourth 16-year-old student through the inside of their clothes.
The Supreme Court has rectified the sentence decreed by the Superior Court of Justice of the Balearic Islands (TSJIB), which considered that the facts did not fit the crime of sexual abuse. On the contrary, it classified the acts as a minor crime of coercion and imposed fines. Consequently, the TSJIB annulled the prison sentences imposed in the first instance by the Provincial Court.
However, the high court has reinstated the prison sentences imposed by the Provincial Court in the first place, which ruled that the acts carried out by the accused were crimes of sexual abuse. However, the TS has maintained the acquittal of a conviction annulled by the TSJIB due to lack of evidence, in which the Court established two years in prison for a fifth student.
In addition to these crimes, the teacher was also sentenced by the Court – and upheld by the TSJ of the Balearic Islands – to fines for minor crimes of coercion for his actions with three other students. In these cases, the man was accused of touching over his clothing, an aspect that is now confirmed.
For the high court, “the actions carried out by the accused on the students who were in his charge constitute acts of an unequivocal sexual nature that must be included in the types of articles 182 and 183 of the Penal Code.” Likewise, the TS has emphasized that this behavior of the accused was “repeated on several occasions during the school year.”
On the other hand, the Superior Court has confirmed that “the Public Prosecutor’s Office is right when it states that the teacher’s behavior exceeds what can be called fleeting or sporadic touching.” The judicial body has even reiterated that, on some occasions, “they have been led to consider the facts as constituting a violation of article 620.2 of the Penal Code, currently a minor crime of coercion.”
Along the same lines, Judge Julián Sánchez Melgar has stressed in his ruling that “it cannot be maintained that only touching the breasts, buttocks or pubic area can comprise the criminal offense of sexual content.” The mere fact of “touching and groping other areas of the body” are also considered “acts that violate sexual freedom in a clear and transparent manner.”
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the court has indicated that “any impartial spectator understands that the conduct carried out by the accused on the minors, due to its own intrinsic gravity and prolongation over time, harms the sexual indemnity of the minors.”
