2023-08-03 13:34:38
The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence to four years in prison imposed on a former Barcelona physiotherapist for touching a club employee without her consent during a physiotherapy session that had been prescribed to treat her for an ailment in the cervicals.
The convicted man had worked as a physiotherapist and osteopath at the club for 30 years, first, as a coordinator and in the first team, and in 2016, when the events occurred, as a physiotherapist for club employees. The worker suffered a blockage in the head and neck derived from the pathology she suffered and the club’s doctor recommended physiotherapy treatment.
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 touched the patient’s breasts and clitoris 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.
The Chamber dismisses the appeal filed by the convicted person against the sentence of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia that confirmed the one issued by the Provincial Court of Barcelona for a consummated crime of sexual abuse. In addition to the aforementioned four-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 compensation of 10,000 euros for the damages caused to the woman. Barcelona was declared subsidiary civil liability for that amount.
touching
The court rejects the appellant’s hypothesis that his actions were medically justified and points out that the victim’s statements about touching her breasts and stretching her nipples, with movements that in no way can be justified from a therapeutic perspective, largely deprive her of credit to the remaining allegations of the defendant.
She adds that «if these 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 a way that is not very compatible with sanitary praxis (without gloves), into the vaginal cavity with the circular movements described by the victim, were part of the procedure, loses credibility. applied treatment.
Likewise, it rejects that the victim had fabricated with non-existent touching of the nipples; or that he adorned his story «with that secondary addition to give greater force to an action that by itself had an undoubted expressive potential: direct contact of the fingers with the internal part of the vaginal cavity, in a maneuver that no layman would imagine compatible with therapeutic massages”.
It points out that “these facts are accepted by the appellant: he tries to explain them with a professional justification. He doesn’t have it for the other touches: that’s why he has no choice but to call them false. But it is totally improbable that they have been maliciously -or unconsciously- invented and exposed by the complainant, departing from reality, with an unjustified and impossible to explain desire to reinforce the veracity of what the appellant has not denied.
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