She was six years old. A girl revealed to her mother that she didn’t want to return to her father’s house because «he had touched her private parts after asking her to sleep with him in his bed, alongside her younger brother, because she was afraid of the dark». Her mother went to pick her up from the father’s house. In the car, she found her strange: «She was moving in the safety seat and was uncomfortable». The mother asked her what was wrong but she didn’t say anything then, later at home, she confided everything and «it was horrible». This is part of what the girl’s mother stated yesterday in the trial against her ex-husband, and the father of the child, in the Santa Cruz de Tenerife Provincial Court.
According to the mother of the minor – in a statement that lasted more than an hour – the little one confessed on 27 August 2021 that her father had touched her private parts and it hurt. According to what the girl told her that night, it wasn’t the first time. Previously, he had seated her on his lap in a chair in the living room and «asked her to touch his member», added the woman who, until that day, was unaware of these events.
The woman called her father – the girl’s grandfather – to tell him what her granddaughter had told her. She assured the court that they considered taking her to a doctor or psychologist, to then, with a report, report the events to the Civil Guard. However, she claimed that the therapists told her to report the facts without waiting. And thus, she asserts that she did so on 31 August.
The marriage, which had been living in Santa Úrsula, had just separated, in fact, in April of that year when the man – now accused – moved from the family home to another in La Orotava, where the reported events allegedly occurred.
«He had violent outbursts»
According to the mother of the little girl, those events would not have occurred in the house that the couple had shared until recently, but in the house her ex-husband moved to. At one point in her statement, she claimed that her ex-husband «had violent outbursts, was controlling, and I knew he had tapped my Telegram channel, as I saw manipulated conversations I hadn’t written and because his contacts had transferred to my agenda,» detailed the woman who added that he is in IT.
After the woman’s statement, who was quite visibly nervous, it was the turn of the girl who is now 10 years old. Though her mother’s statement was long, the girl’s testimony was not short. In fact, the president of the court announced that only two more witnesses would testify and that the hearing would be postponed with three more to go, the experts’ presentations, and the interrogation of the accused as the alleged perpetrator of two sexual abuse offences, scheduling a new date to continue the proceedings.
The girl confirmed what her mother had previously said in court. At times she had slept in her parents’ bed because «she was afraid of the dark» and exposed that «nothing strange had ever happened in the family home, only in the accused’s «new house,» whom during her statement she always referred to by his first name.
«I don’t think he deserves to be called dad»
«I don’t think he deserves to be called dad, a good father doesn’t do that to a daughter», she concluded via videoconference requested by the plaintiff’s lawyer to prevent victim and accused from meeting.
In response to the defence’s questions, the girl assured that she had «had nightmares». «With a blond boy?» the lawyer asked, to which she replied no: «With my father, I dreamed he came to cut all our heads off for telling what he had done to me», said the girl.
The Public Prosecutor seeks to impose a sentence of six years in prison for each of the two sexual abuse offences, another six years of supervised release after serving the prison sentence and 10 years of no contact or communication with his daughter.
For their part, the defence lawyer requests the accused’s acquittal by denying that such abuses had occurred.
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