The Military Chamber of the Supreme Court has ratified the sentence of 10 months in prison to four civil guards (one of them first corporal) for the harassment and humiliation to which they subjected a colleague for years with insults, jokes, nicknames and homophobic and derogatory comments , both in terms of their appearance and their professional worth. The magistrates ratify the sentence of the Fourth Territorial Military Court (based in La Coruña) and consider the four accused authors of a completed crime of abuse of authority, in its modality of professional harassment or serious attack against personal dignity at work or carrying out acts that involve discrimination based on sexual orientation, applying the mitigating factor of undue delay.
The Supreme Court completely rejects the appeals of the four convicted persons and also corrects the appealed sentence in order to establish the subsidiary civil liability of the State in the compensation of 10,000 euros recognized to the victim for psychological and moral damages caused by the crime.
The trial court established that amount in its sentence and sentenced the four defendants to pay it jointly and severally, which the Supreme maintains, now adding the subsidiary responsibility of the State, considering that not including it was an obvious material error.
The proven facts of the confirmed sentence show that between 2010, when the victim arrived at the Noia barracks (La Coruña) and 2014, a first corporal of the Civil Guard and three other guards more veteran than him at the destination, referred to his person with expressions such as «maricón», «Maripili´», «strawberry», «the woman from the Post». The First Corporal, specifically, made comments referring to “faggots should not be in the Civil Guard”, “death to faggots”, “up Spain and death to faggots”, “I prefer to have a dead son or a drug addict What a fag”, indicate these proven facts.
“These expressions alternated, on occasions, with jokes or taunts, and comments were also made about the lack of professional competence, calling the Civil Guard… useless, lazy,” adds the sentence. The situation described lasted for four years until on November 30, 2014, the victim had to be treated for an anxiety crisis. Since then, she has been discharged from the service for medical reasons and receives psychological and psychiatric care for the long-term chronic and complex condition that she suffers from.
The defendants appealed to the Supreme Court alleging violation of the right to the presumption of innocence, considering that there was insufficient proof of the charge.
The Supreme dismisses the appeals by noting that the Fourth Territorial Military Court has made a reasonable and reasoned assessment of the evidence, both of the victim’s statement and of the witnesses who corroborated it “supporting its credibility”, concluding that there were no contradictions , neither modifications nor ambiguities, in the different declarations, but that they are “firm, persistent and forceful”.
