The Girona Court has sentenced the accused of raping a woman in an apartment in Empuriabrava —Alt Empordà — to 5 years in prison on May 10, 2018. The sentence states that the victim drew a “red line” that the accused should respect when he told her that he did not want to have sex: “We cannot attribute to people with a shared affective or sexual history a kind of carte blanche of consent”.
According to the sentence, the defendant returned to the apartment after walking the dog and, when he saw the woman on the sofa, he sat next to her and began to touch her. He ignored her refusal and raped her. As a consequence of the attack, the woman suffers a psychological affectation compatible with post-traumatic stress.
The prosecutor’s office and the private prosecution, headed by the lawyer Benet Salellas, requested 12 years in prison for the accused. The defense maintained that they had been consensual sexual relations and requested an acquittal.
The judgment of the fourth section of the Girona Court, for which magistrate VÃctor Correas was a speaker, states that the victim and the accused went to spend a few days together in Empuriabrava.
Around two in the afternoon on May 10, 2018, the defendant returned to the apartment after walking the dog and saw the woman sitting on the sofa. “He sat next to her, stretched her out on the sofa and, wanting to satisfy her sexual desires, put his hand on her vagina,” the sentence states.
The victim told him that she did not want to have sex with him. The defendant, Raphaël Poulille, ignored her refusal, stretched out on her, pinned her down and raped her against her will.
At trial, the defendant acknowledged that the victim told him that she did not want to and that it was rape, but argued that it was a kind of sexual game because it was a fantasy that she had. However, the court does not believe these explanations and maintains that the victim clearly drew a “red line” that the convicted person should not have crossed at any time: “This refusal, which neither party disputes, is a red line which the defendant could not trespass in any way. No further explanation is necessary to him.”
Likewise, the room also points out that the fact of having had previous sexual relations or a “shared affective history” cannot be “a carte blanche of consent for the maintenance of sexual relations.”
The Court also argues that the attack has had psychological consequences for the victim who suffers from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder for which he is still robbed today.
“The room considers that the complainant’s story meets the characteristics to access the category of proven facts, since no circumstance has been detected that calls into question her subjective credibility, no contradictions or gaps are appreciated and her statement is corroborated. by objective and subjective elements, without the account provided by the defendant allowing rational justification of the emotional and psychiatric picture that he presented and presents to the victim”, concludes the fourth section.
For this reason, the Girona Court condemns Raphaël Poulille as the author of a crime of sexual assault with penetration and imposes 5 years in prison and 5 years of probation. He will not be able to get closer than 300 meters or communicate with the victim for 10 years, nor work with minors during the same time. In concept of civil responsibility, he must indemnify the woman with 10,000 euros.
The trial was finally held on November 7. Three weeks earlier, he had had to be suspended because the interpreter did not translate the statements literally.
The sentence includes a particular vote by magistrate Daniel Varona who, as he has done in other resolutions, defends that the application of the “only yes is yes” law, which translates into lower sentences, is based on an “interpretation “inadequate” of the principle of retroactivity.