A court supports a victim of abuse who took six years to report her attacker: "Guilt, shame and fear"

A Madrid court has imposed three years in prison on a man who in 2015 sexually abused a drunk and semi-conscious woman who did not report the incident until, six years later, she found her attacker by chance walking through the city center. . The judges of the Madrid Court endorse the victim’s story and justify the time it took to report the facts. “Guilt, shame and fear,” the judges say, are “frequent feelings” in victims of sexual crimes that leave an “indelible mark” on those who suffer from them.

The conviction, which can still be appealed and which elDiario.es has been able to examine, explains that the victim was sitting with a friend on a terrace in the center of Madrid in April 2021 when she stood up and pointed her finger at a man who was wearing the face covered with a mask. She held him at the scene until the Municipal Police showed up and then identified him, without hesitation, as the man who had sexually abused her six years earlier. According to an agent at the trial, the accused even knelt on the ground to ask that the woman not be ignored.