The TSJA confirms four years in prison for Santi Mina for sexual abuse

On the contrary, it partly upholds the condemned person’s appeal and reduces the compensation from 50,000 euros to 25,000 euros for the moral damage caused to the victim.

The sentence of the Andalusian High Court accepts the proven facts of the resolution of the High Court of Almería, which recounted the sexual abuse that occurred in July 2017 in a van that was parked in the vicinity of a nightclub in Mójácar, where the two defendants spent the night and traveled with two other friends. It only deletes the phrase “the concept of superiority”, considering that there was no flawed consent of the victim, since neither in the account of the facts nor in the legal foundation of the judgment of the Court “there is no express mention that the victim consented to any of the abusive acts described”.

The Court rejects the convicted person’s grounds for appeal, in which he indicates that his right to effective judicial protection was violated because the ruling of the Almería Court was not impartial when assessing the victim’s statements. In addition, it defends that there were contradictions in the different statements of the victim. The Chamber explains that the story lacks “relevant contradictions in essential aspects.”

It also rules out the appeal section that the victim acted motivated by a spurious motive, which would consist of obtaining large compensation. In this sense, he indicates that the testimony of the complainant “seems reliable.” “We also appreciate that she persisted in incriminating her and although, in effect, she added new facts in her second statement, we have ruled out that this point was relevant,” he adds. Thus, he recalls that the victim did not want to claim any type of compensation when her rights were instructed in court, I feel that was precisely the moment in which the complainant mentioned the second part of the sexual abuse recognized in the proven facts.

Reduction of compensation

Regarding compensation for moral damages, the victim asked that it be increased from the 50,000 that the Court sentence included to almost 117,000 to compensate for the damage and its impact on his daily life, while the convicted person asked that it be reduced to 2,000 euros. Finally, the TSJA reduces the compensation to 25,000 euros.

In this sense, it explains that it must maintain the criterion of proportionality that the court maintains with assumptions of the same characteristics, in addition to taking into account objective factors, such as the transience of the conduct prosecuted, the manifest desire of the victim in his first judicial statement not to receive compensation and the entity of the consequences reflected in the expert report of the forensic psychologist.