The Court of Barcelona has upheld the appeal presented by the Prosecutor’s Office against the sentence of Criminal Court number 10 of Barcelona that sentenced Víctor G.T. to three years and three months of psychiatric hospitalization. for harassing the artist Paula Bonet for more than three years. The magistrates consider that there is an “irremediable deficit” in the sentence, such as “the absence or insufficiency of an entirely relevant test to know the reasons for the decision made” and for this reason they order that it be redrafted.
In this sense, the court is asked to argue the reasons why it applied the defense of mental disorder to Víctor G.T. despite condemning him for threats, harassment and breaking the ban on approaching Bonet. The sentence recalled that the harasser “lived a parallel reality that invaded his thinking and behavior, to irrational limits, making it impossible for him to act in accordance with a normal understanding” and that he suffered a mental disorder diagnosed as encapsulated erotomaniac delusion that “completely conditioned his will”, although the disease can be controlled with treatment.
For the Court of Barcelona, ??this decision has a lack of motivation since they are not exposed in the sense of exposing the reasons so that the complete defense can be applied to the convicted person, related to his mental health. That is why it annuls the sentence and urges Criminal Court 10 of Barcelona to elaborate a new one with a “high degree of motivation” on this disorder that affected the defense.
In addition, the internment for more than three years, the court sentenced Víctor to more than a year of probation, external psychiatric treatment and 10 years without approaching the victim, who will have to compensate with about 4,000 euros.
In the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office requested three years in prison for the convicted person, while the private prosecution, which represents the artist, demanded four. The court considered that the convicted person presented a disorder based on an expert report provided by his defense and rejected the forensic opinion that concluded that Víctor did not present any pathology “compatible with an active psychotic process” and maintained “faculties preserved”.
Despite this, the Court of Barcelona maintains that the motivation of the sentence presents an “irremediable deficit” due to the “absence” or “insufficiency” of the evidence on which the judge’s decision to apply the defense is based, for which requests that in its new resolution include the reasoning required by the expert. It is stated that the forensic report is not incompatible with the one provided” by the defense, but the reasons for such an assertion, of “vital importance”, are not explained.
For the court, the application of a complete defense of mental disturbance “requires a high degree of motivation” and, in this case, he adds, it is “precise to develop the argument that makes it understand what type of pathology is the erotic-manic disorder from a scientific-psychiatric perspective, what type of affectation does it have for the cognitive component of psychic capacity”. In addition, the court says, the “causal relationship between the disorder and the event or activity that makes up the offense” must be explained.
The sentence indicates that since July 2019 the convicted person was interested in the artist and, “without having maintained any type of previous relationship, he began to impose his presence and seek his proximity by going to the place where he did his work as a writer, painter and illustrator with the intention of seeing her and hearing from her”.
Around half past five in the afternoon on a day at the end of July, the condemned man went to the workshop when she was receiving some students, introduced himself with her name and verbalized his interest in meeting her. Given this, Bonet reacted “cautiously”, since she was not aware that he was a student of hers. She asked him to leave her, but the defendant reacted by hugging her suddenly. Bonet took the opportunity to move him from her until she managed to get him to leave the premises.
From then on, the harassment was repeated, whether Bonet was there or not. In addition, the convicted man followed her at public events in which the illustrator participated and even sent her threatening emails and insisted that she was going to rape her. He also left her gifts and threatening notes in her workshop, signed “V” for rapist. In January 2020, she tried to sneak into her workshop when the artist was with her students, for which she had to notify the Mossos d’Esquadra.
Months later, he wrote a message to him on social networks in which he said: “You better not set foot in my city again, because if I come across you I will strangle you and dismember you” and added: “I will leave my eyes for the end and I will keep my eyes nipples in a lunch box for my own enjoyment.” “If you prefer, you can beg for mercy from that rapist, stalker and psychopath, you will only be raped after suffering an eternal beating,” she concluded.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
