The Supreme Court has confirmed the two-year prison sentence imposed on Rodrigo de Santos, former PP councilor in Palma, for sexually abusing a prisoner while working for a foundation close to the party that cared for inmates in Madrid. The judges confirm that the former mayor of the Popular Party took advantage of his position as an educator in an NGO to sexually abuse “a person with a lack of personal roots” in a “vulnerable situation”, thus justifying his being sentenced to prison and not just to a fine. It is the second firm sentence imposed on Rodrigo de Santos for sexual abuse.
The case of Rodrigo de Santos was revealed by elDiario.es. Councilor for Urban Planning for the PP in the Palma City Council between 2003 and 2007, the politician with an ultra-Catholic profile began to collaborate in 2014 with the Father Garralda Foundation, linked to the party and dedicated, among other things, to providing assistance to prisoners to facilitate their reintegration. social. A few years later he was already the coordinator of one of its programs and managed, in practice, the homes in Madrid where inmates spent their prison permits.
By then Rodrigo de Santos, who became Jaume Matas’ campaign director, already had a record of sexual crimes, although according to the courts the Foundation he worked for did not know about it even though those convictions had been widely published in the press. One of them, two years in prison, for spending City Hall money in a brothel. The second, more than 13 years in prison, for sexually abusing three brothers, two of them minors.
Years later, already in the ranks of the Father Garralda Foundation in Madrid, he abused one of the prisoners he had to watch over. A young Moroccan man who was serving a sentence in Soto del Real, whom he took to his home and whom he sexually abused taking advantage of his position. A sexual crime that resulted in a two-year prison sentence, being acquitted of another similar accusation against another prisoner that could not be proven.
In this second case of abuses, the Supreme Court rejects the last appeal of Rodrigo de Santos, whose future is now in the hands of the Madrid courts: a sentence of two years in prison would not have to imply his mandatory entry into prison but he has a criminal record for this same type of crimes.
The former PP councilor in Palma fought, above all, that a prison sentence had been imposed on him and he could opt for a less serious one. The Supreme Court recalls that a fine would have been “insufficient” to punish his abuses, alluding to the context of the events: “Taking advantage of a climate of trust and the vulnerability of the victim”, the young prisoner whom he had to help.
The abuses by Rodrigo de Santos on the inmate, adds the Supreme Court, “occurred in the context of a relationship between an educator and a person with a lack of personal and social roots in Spain, he was a person in a vulnerable situation which entails a further reproach of the author’s conduct.”
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