The Supreme Court raises the sentences for the three convicted of 'the pack of Sabadell' for the "intimidating effect"

Two go from 13 and a half years to 24 years in prison and a third, from 22 to 28 years.

MADRID, 1 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The Supreme Court has agreed to raise the sentences of the three members of 'the pack of Sabadell' who were convicted of participating in the group rape of an 18-year-old girl in that Catalan town in February 2019, considering that in the sexual assaults multiple behavior of those who are part of the group, even if they are not the perpetrators of the violations, have an extra seriousness due to the environmental privacy of the victim that must be qualified as necessary cooperation, not just complicity.

In the sentence, collected by Europa Press, the court has upheld the appeal of the Prosecutor's Office and has raised the sentence of the two convicted for complicity in the three violations suffered by the young woman from 13 years and 6 months to 24 years in prison. now be considered necessary cooperators of the same and not accomplices.

Likewise, the Supreme Court has raised the sentence of one of the perpetrators of sexual assault from 22 to 28 years in prison, on whom it imposes 12 years in prison as the perpetrator of the rape and 16 more years as a necessary cooperator of the two sexual assaults committed by two other men (one of them in absentia and another unidentified).

According to the account of the facts that have been considered proven, one of the defendants approached the victim when she was leaving a nightclub in February 2019. He grabbed her by the neck, put her against the wall and sexually assaulted her. Then he took her to an industrial warehouse, where the rest of the convicts were - all between 25 and 30 years old - who raped her repeatedly until around 7:30 a.m. the young woman managed to escape and asked for help from some neighbors who were coming out of her house. garage.

It should be remembered that in 2021 the Provincial Court of Barcelona sentenced three of the four defendants from the 'Sabadell herd' to up to 31 years in prison for the three sexual assaults. Specifically, the magistrates imposed 31 years in prison on the perpetrator of one of the attacks and a necessary cooperator of the other two; 13 years and 6 months to two other defendants for complicity in a crime of sexual assault; and they acquitted the fourth defendant, "since there is no evidence that proves his presence at the place and time of the events."

Subsequently, the Superior Court of Justice (TSJ) of Catalonia partially upheld the appeal of one of the defendants and considered him an accomplice and necessary non-cooperator of the two sexual assaults not committed by him, so it established two 4-year sentences for it. and 6 months in prison instead of 9 years, keeping the sentence of 13 years in prison unchanged for the sexual assault he committed. In other words, the sentence became 22 years.

Now, the Supreme Court has raised the sentences by estimating the claim of the Prosecutor's Office that what was considered complicity in the sexual assaults of the three defendants is qualified as necessary cooperation in the crimes.

The high court has explained that the concept of necessary cooperation extends to cases in which, "even though there is no preordained plan, the violation occurs in the presence of other individuals without prior agreement, but with awareness of the action that is carried out jointly ".

"In these cases, the intimidating effect is produced by the simple presence or concurrence of several people, other than the one who materially consummates the violation, since the existence of the group can produce a state of environmental intimidation in the person attacked. And it is that intimidation always and group intimidation inexcusably makes the victim adopt an attitude of submission, not consent," the magistrates have specified.

In line, the Supreme Court has stressed that "in multiple sexual assaults there is an intensification of the intimidation suffered by the victim with an effective decrease in their ability to respond, all of which gives rise to a qualitative increase in the seriousness of the situation, radically incompatible with complicity".