The Supreme Court has warned in a ruling of the danger of "child grooming" or cyberbullying of minors, which seeks to emotionally control a minor with the aim of "preparing the ground" for sexual abuse, a practice against which the Penal Code deals. to advance "the protective barriers".
The Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court makes this reflection in a ruling that confirms the sentence to a fine of 2,880 euros for a person accused of a crime of cybersexual sexual harassment of a 15-year-old boy, who was 24 years older.
The convicted man was a relative of the boy - his mother's second cousin - and he spent the summer with them at a campsite in the town of Creixell (Tarragona); There he established contact with him and began sending him "insistent to the point of obsessive" messages on social media.
Messages that are "victimizing, harassing, repetitive, blaming the minor for not responding to the condemned man's demand for attention," says the Supreme Court in the ruling in which it also confirms the prohibition of approaching the boy within 300 meters, the obligation to compensate him with 3,000 euros and disqualification for two years from carrying out work that involves contact with minors.
The accused, who at the time of the events was 39 years old compared to the minor's 15, was acquitted in the first instance, although the Provincial Court of Tarragona revoked the sentence and sentenced him to the sentence now ratified by the Supreme Court.
The high court sees in his insistent messages "the purpose of committing an act constituting a crime against the sexual indemnity" of the minor and "acts" to try to get him alone, as well as "multiple" messages that sought to make him feel guilty.
The magistrates reflect in their sentence on the crime of cyberbullying and remember that the criminal types related to the indemnity and sexual freedom of minors under 16 years of age seek their protection.
They explain that the personality of minors at that age can be affected by actions that "can negatively condition" their future and their own dignity. Therefore, their consent would be "irrelevant" in this type of crime because "there is a legal presumption that the minor is not capable of giving valid consent," since "if they did give it, it would be irrelevant because it was flawed."
In any case, as can be seen from the account of proven facts, the young man's messages show his surprise and rejection of what the accused conveyed to him about an alleged relationship between the two. "But what relationship?" The boy answered, reminding him that he was the son of his cousin.
For the Supreme Court, the convicted man took advantage "in a certain way of a distant kinship relationship" with the victim, and there is no doubt that, despite his "dialectical efforts", the "personal, social and relational elements clearly indicate a marked evolutionary asymmetry" between the minor and the convicted person.
