(2018.11.19 Crux Rome Bureau Chief Inés San Martín）
カトリック属人教区・オプスデイ会員信徒でスペイン人の元教員が15日、スペインの裁判所で、未成年を性的に虐待した罪で刑期11年、被害者との接触15年間禁止の有罪判決を受けた。今後5日間で控訴するか否かを判断するという。
有罪判決を受けたのは北スペインLeioaの男子校Gazteluetaに教員として勤務していたホセ・マリア・マルチネス・サンツ。2008年から2010年にかけ、当時12歳から13歳だった男子生徒に繰り返し性的虐待を加えていた、として起訴されていた。
当初、父兄から訴えを受けた教会当局と学校が対応したものの、詳細な調査はなされず、検察当局が捜査、逮捕、起訴したが、公判でもマルチネス本人は無罪を主張。検察側も、被害者の訴えの一部に信用できない点があるとして、刑期20か月の軽い刑を求めていた。だが、被害者の弁護士は「被害者は恥辱のゆえに、被害の全容を語っていない」と反論していた。
スペインの日刊紙El Diario Norteによると、被害者家族は、これまで何年間も被害の訴えが教会などから無視されていたが、裁判所で有罪判決が出たことに「とても満足している」と語った。
公判中、マルチネスによる犯行当時、副校長だった男子校の校長は、内部調査をしたものの、訴えが真実だという証拠は見つからなかった、とし、マルチネスが、出入り可能な自分の部屋で犯行に及ぶことは”不可能”とも主張。これに対して、被害者の父親は、真実を語ることを宣誓したうえで、学校当局は”何もしてくれなかった”と批判した。
（以下英語本文続く）
After a personal crisis in May, the victim said he was being threatened by his former schoolmates, and he began to verbalize the sexual abuses.
The parents had a meeting at the school where they brought up the allegations against the former students, two of whom have been found guilty by a family court of threatening their former classmate.
Gayarrola was then tasked with investigating the abuse allegations, including accusations that the former tutor had shown the victim pictures of half-naked women with sexual intent. Yet according to the now-headmaster, evidence of those images could not be found on Martínez’s computer. Furthermore, the school had a filter to avoid access to pornographic material.
In a statement made after the ruling, the Opus Dei school said that they are “committed” to responding to “any circumstance of abuse or harassment that a minor might suffer,” and “determined” to fight this “very grave crime.”
However, they added they’re “very affected” by the sentence, because, the statement says, on several opportunities the case had been internally investigated and found inconsistent.
With no words of support to the former student, the school does say that the sentence can still be appealed and that it’s not “definitive.”
When the case became public in 2012, the school responded with a statement saying that they were “especially hurt by the treatment of the former professor, since the published account of the facts is constructed through a unilateral version of the facts.”
The professor, who at the time was in Australia, had made no statement to the media. The school also said at that time that they had testimony of professors and students which contradicted the alleged facts.
The prosecutor demanded three years in prison, and during the trial even questioned the most serious accusations made by the victim, which included penetration. The prosecutor even suggested an “alternative” sentence of 20 months in prison.
Yet all the medical experts who treated the victim supported his testimony, and underlined that if at the beginning he hadn’t shared all the abuse it was due to fear and because it’s normal that in these cases “reality becomes more evident with time.”
