2023-08-03 14:16:30
A man who worked as a physiotherapist at FC Barcelona in 2016 has been sentenced to four years in jail to do touching a club employee without your consent during a session physiotherapy that had been prescribed to treat her with a cervical ailment.
The Criminal Chamber of the Supremo gives firmness to this sentence, which had previously been imposed by the Provincial Court of Barcelona, which judged the matter, and validated by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia on appeal.
The convict worked as physiotherapist and osteopath at the club for 30 yearsFirst, as a coordinator and in the first division team, and in 2016, when the events occurred, as a physiotherapist for the club’s employees. The worker accused a blockage in the head and neck derived from the pathology she suffered and the club’s doctor recommended a physiotherapy treatment.
reached the pubis
According to the proven facts, in the third session, he tried to massage the abdomen area down to the pubic area of the patient, who warned him that she had her period, at which point he stopped the massage. In the fourth session she performed touching the breasts and the clitoris the patient without her consent. The convict asked her if she was okay and she answered yes to end the situation and get out of there. After what happened, the woman suffered an adjustment disorder with reactive anxiety and she was out for two months.
In addition to the aforementioned 4-year prison sentence, the first instance sentence imposed an additional penalty of special disqualification from practicing the profession of osteopath or physiotherapist for a period of two years and the payment of a compensation of 10,000 euros for damages caused to the woman. FC Barcelona was declared subsidiary civil liability for that amount.
Justification “no credit”
The court in its sentence, presentation by magistrate Antonio del Moral, reject the hypothesis of the appellant that his action was sanitary justified and points out that the victim’s statements about touching her breasts and stretching her nipples, with movements that can in no way be justified from a therapeutic perspective, largely deprive the defendant’s other allegations of credibility.
She adds that “if those massages on the breasts had not taken place, I could enjoy some – scarce, in any case – chance of the argument aimed at, at least, generating doubts about the circular movements with a finger on the clitoris; but if these other rubbings are considered true, the hypothesis that the introduction of fingers, in such a way little compatible with sanitary praxis (without gloves), in the vaginal cavity with the circular movements described by the victim, were part of the applied treatment”. Likewise, it rejects that the victim had fabricated with non-existent touching of the nipples; or that adorned her story.
The ruling explains that the argument of the Court when dealing with the therapeutic suitability of intracavitary massages “cannot be considered as an immutable acceptance that, in effect, the defendant, when carrying out these maneuvers, strictly complied with professional requirements, but simply as the indication that, although it is accepted (as it is accepted) that this type of massage could be indicated in some cases and could even be so in the specific case, the criminal nature of the facts would not vanish, by exceeding the consent given by the victim ”.
“Wild Speculations”
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He adds that “they are acts of sexual content not legitimized by a non-existent consent. It is a leap into the void to say that having not made an express protest -except for discomfort due to menstruation- in the previous session and going to the next appointment, consent for those peculiar intravaginal massages had to be given of course. Neither can silence be branded as consent before an ambiguous mention “now, the interior”; “Now we will work the internal”.
The court considers “arranged and unsustainable” speculation about a conspiracy by the company or some of its employees using the victim to achieve his dismissal. In this sense, it indicates that “the victim was encouraged to file a complaint by Club personnel, nor does it diminish the credibility of her account nor, of course, does it deprive the complaint of effectiveness as a required condition for prosecution.”
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