Spain court sentences man over gang rape website
Pamplona court also ordered the 39-year-old Madrid man to pay the victim 15,000 euros
Madrid: A Spanish court sentenced on Tuesday a man to 18 months in jail for setting up a website showing where a notorious gang rape took place during the running of the bulls festival in the city of Pamplona three years ago.
The Pamplona court also ordered the 39-year-old Madrid man to pay the victim of the gang rape 15,000 euros ($16,600) in damages, saying the website had caused her "significant additional suffering".
The woman saw her "suffering exposed, minimised, trivialised and used...in clear disregard for her dignity," the court added in its ruling.
The website, which went live in December 2018, showed the lobby of the Pamplona apartment building where the gang rape took place in July 2016 as well as the route taken that day in the city by the five young men who carried it out.
Spain's Supreme Court in June 2019 sentenced the five men, who called themselves "The Pack" in a WhatsApp group where they shared video images of the gang rape, to 15 years in jail.
The case shocked Spain not just because of the nature of the crime but because the five men were initially sentenced by lower courts on lesser offences. That sparked massive protests calling for the country's rape laws to be changed.
The Pamplona court said the appearance of the website, called Manada Tour, had worsened the post-traumatic stress which the woman has suffered since the gang rape and she once again started to take medication to deal with her anxiety.
It was not immediately clear if the man who was convicted for setting up the website will actually go to jail since prison sentences are usually suspended in Spain for first offences for non-violent crimes carrying a sentence of less than two years.