Spanish court acquits 20-year-old gypsy who raped 12-year-old girl because their “relationship” was “part of the cultural reality of their community”

• A man in Spain is acquitted of raping a 12-year-old girl
• Court ruled that their sexual relations were just a part of gypsy culture
• This came after another man guilty of raping a minor had his sentence reduced

A Spanish court has acquitted the man who raped a 12-year-old girl, concluding that the relationship between the two was simply part of Roma culture.

On Tuesday, the court in Ciudad Real, central Spain, took into account the socio-cultural context of the Gypsy ethnic group to reduce the sentence for the sexual assault and abuse of a minor by a 20-year-old man.

This resulted in the perpetrator, who left his 12-year-old victim pregnant with twins, being acquitted.

The decision said the relationship had always been “consensual within the context of a romantic relationship,” adding that the two were “close in age and maturity.”

The girl’s pregnancy was only discovered after an examination by a doctor, who alerted the authorities, which led to the man’s arrest.

The public prosecutor had demanded a prison sentence of eleven years, but the court decided on an acquittal.

The age of consent in Spain is 16, meaning that anyone younger than that cannot consent to sex. However, the court ruled that the man should benefit from the legal exception.

The acquittal is the latest in a series of rulings in which judges have taken into account the customs of part of Spain’s Roma population when dealing with cases of sexual harassment of minors.

On Monday, just one day before the verdict in the Ciudad Real case, the Provincial Court of Leon reduced the sentence of a gypsy found guilty of sexually abusing a minor, RTVE reported.

Although the unnamed man impregnated her three times between the ages of 12 and 15, the court concluded that in “Gypsy culture, couples form unions at a very young age”, a circumstance that acted as a mitigating factor.

He was sentenced to only 11 years.

The victim, also Roma, told the court in Leon that in her culture it was normal for a twelve-year-old to have sexual relations with an adult.

Prosecutors had originally sought a 37-year prison sentence for the man for three counts of rape, but agreed to a lesser sentence as part of a settlement.

Beatriz Carrillo, Director General for Non-Discrimination and Anti-Racism at the Spanish Ministry of Equality, described the court’s ruling in Leon’s case regarding X as “shameful”.

“All the more so, (the verdict) alludes to an allegedly non-existent custom in order to mitigate the sentence. The penal code does not exclude the protection and preservation of underage gypsies, otherwise it would justify the fact that the abuse, assault or rape of gypsy girls has hardly any legal consequences,” she wrote on the social platform.

Sara Gimenez, general director of the Gypsy Secretariat Foundation in Spain, said on Wednesday that the latest rulings promoted a “negative image” of the Roma that “does not correspond to the reality of today’s gypsies”.

According to the Gypsy Secretariat Foundation, around 750,000 Roma live in Spain.