The Criminal Chamber of Supreme court has confirmed the sentence to 7 years in prison and 3 and a half years of special disqualification for the exercise of the profession of doctor and psychotherapist to a psychiatrist for sexually abusing a patient in Santa Cruz of Tenerife.
The court has dismissed the appeal filed by the convicted person against the sentence of the Provincial Court of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which imposed on him for a continuing crime of sexual abuse with carnal access to the prison sentence and disqualification, as well as the payment of a compensation of 20,000 euros to the victim for damages suffered.
The Chamber rejects the appellant’s thesis, which argued that the content of the ‘sms’ and ‘whatsapp’ messages between the complainant and the accused, contributed by the victim herself to the procedure, it follows that the relationships were totally consensual, and that the “inability to say no” alleged by the victim cannot be justified.
It indicates that the sentence under appeal did analyze the discharge evidence consisting of the ‘sms’ and ‘whatsapp’ messages, the content of which, according to the appellant, calls into question the version of the complainant, “and that they must be interpreted in the context of that relationship of superiority between the accused psychiatrist and his patient, the victim, and as the Public Prosecutor’s Office points out in its statement opposing the motive, it is not simply a relationship between two adults, each married, who freely agree to secretly maintain between them a ‘affair‘that is prolonged in time for a period of time. ”
He adds that on the contrary it is a situation that “declares the proven fact in which the accused is the woman’s psychiatrist and is so for almost 9 years during which time he begins to have sexual relations with her after knowing through his profession all the intimacies, all the weaknesses, all the emotional springs and presenting himself as the person that in exchange for receiving money for it, he could cure her of her anorexia and bulimia problems. ”
The Chamber remarks that it is in this context that the events occur, in which the situation of prevaluation appears with dazzling clarity.
In that sense, it specifies that the victim periodically came to look for medical advice, medication, and guidelines for healing and “he meets a person who abuses this situation and provokes a sexual relationship in which the consent of the victim appears completely flawed.”
It is not a relationship between equals
The sentence states that “it is true that in the messages, as the appellant says, texts that suggest a relationship between two lovers can be read on many occasions, but things change if the particular relationship between the two is repaired: they are not only two adults, it is about a woman medicated by the accused, confident in her medical judgment, in her knowledge of the mind and the problems she had, and the psychiatrist who assisted her for 9 years, lowering the position of the doctor to a mere relationship between equals it’s not reasonable and the Court does not. ”
It also indicates that the victim’s testimony is coherent and persistent in its incrimination and that the appealed judgment considered it credible and sufficient to prove the facts.
In addition, it emphasizes that it was corroborated by other elements – Witness statements, expert reports – that “firmly and solidly support the report of the complainant that when she had sexual relations, her consent was not free and conscious, but was manipulated by the defendant, who continued to treat her therapeutically “.
