MADRID: Spain’s Excessive Court docket has discovered former soccer federation boss Luis Rubiales responsible of sexual assault for kissing participant Jenni Hermoso with out her consent and fined him over 10,000 euros ($10,434) in a case which induced a nationwide furore.
It acquitted him of a cost of coercion, the courtroom stated on Thursday in a ruling seen by Reuters. Rubiales instructed Reuters he would enchantment, saying: “I’m going to maintain preventing.”
Prosecutors had sought a jail sentence for Rubiales, 47, over the incident that provoked a heated debate in Spain about sexism in ladies’s soccer and wider Spanish society and gave momentum to a “Me Too” motion within the nation.
The courtroom stated it had additionally acquitted Rubiales’ three co-defendants who have been accused of making an attempt to coerce Hermoso into saying the kiss, on the 2023 World Cup awards ceremony in Sydney, was consensual. The following scandal overshadowed Spain’s victory within the match.
Rubiales, who’s the goal of a separate corruption investigation into commissions paid over a profitable deal to stage the Spanish Tremendous Cup competitors in Saudi Arabia, has maintained all through this month’s trial that Hermoso had consented to be kissed amid the celebrations.
However Choose Jose Manuel Fernandez-Prieto stated he believed Hermoso’s testimony that she had not.
He discovered Rubiales responsible of sexual assault. However he stated that whereas this was “all the time reproachable”, this occasion was of minor depth as there was no violence or intimidation.
Because it concerned a kiss slightly than a extra severe motion, Rubiales needs to be spared time in jail, Fernandez-Prieto stated. “The pecuniary penalty should be chosen, which is much less severe than the custodial sentence,” he stated in his ruling.
The ruling additionally banned Rubiales from going inside a 200-m (218 yards) radius of Hermoso and from speaking along with her for one 12 months. He may even should pay Hermoso 3,000 euros as compensation.The wonderful was set at 20 euros a day over an 18-month interval.
Rubiales’ gross annual wage on the RFEF federation was 675,762 euros. Through the trial, Hermoso stated the unsolicited kiss from her boss and the commotion that adopted “tainted one of many happiest days of my life”, whereas her teammates testified it left her overwhelmed, crying and exhausted within the following hours and days.
The general sense of the decision, if not the gentle sentence, was hailed as a victory for ladies’s rights in a rustic the place macho attitudes are nonetheless deeply ingrained in some sectors of society regardless of appreciable progress in current a long time.
“When there isn’t a consent there’s assault and that’s what the choose certifies on this sentence. The sufferer’s phrase is honoured, because the legislation stipulates, and shouldn’t be questioned,” Equality Minister Ana Redondo within the leftist authorities of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez wrote on X.
Outstanding feminist politician Irene Montero, a member of the European Parliament, additionally stated the ruling was a victory for the motion, though she lamented the “minimal wonderful and damages”.
“Not way back, it was unthinkable {that a} courtroom would recognise a kiss with out consent as a sexual assault. Feminism is altering all the things: Solely ‘sure’ means ‘sure’,” she stated.
The ruling may be appealed.
Hermoso’s lawyer instructed Reuters it was as much as his shopper to determine if “she desires to maintain up the struggle”.
The Affiliation of Spanish Footballers (AFE), which was a non-public prosecutor within the case, stated the ruling was “a major step ahead within the defence of girls’s rights and within the struggle for a sport freed from abuse and inequality.”