A couple has been arrested after it was found that their 11-year-old daughter had 200 cigarette burns on her body.

It was a routine visit to the doctor in Jaén; the girl needed a vaccination jab – the nurse was taken aback by the perfectly round burns all over her body. She called her supervisor who examined the girl and found “innumerable marks; around 200, that would suggest cigarette burns.” The parents were immediately arrested.

The law courts in Úbeda (Jaén) immediately opened a case against them for malos tratos, or abuse, which is hardly surprising as the girl explained that the marks were caused by her father who made them with a lit cigarette.

Her pathetic explanation about how that these “sessions” coincided with when the father was drunk and had watched football – and it had been going on for the last two years.

The mother is charged with incubrimento (covering up) yet both parents declare themselves innocent and both are at liberty pending trial without bail. However the judge has placed a court order forbidding them from approaching within 100 metres of the child. At present, she lives with an uncle.

Subsequent investigations have revealed that the child had little or no social life, having no friends of her age, neither at school or within her family relations. She never invited anybody home nor accepted invitations to the homes of others.

The way the poor lass had to dress – with several layers of clothes, regardless of the weather, was also indicative of an abnormal family/social arrangement: she habitually wore up to “five or six layers of clothing.”

Apart from the wounds – her face and hands were clear – her nutritional condition was also seriously lacking.

As is often the case in these matters, the victim showed a loyalty to her parents, stating that they loved her and that her father let cigarette fall on her, “accidentally,” when he was drinking and watching a football match on the TV:

The father, on the other hand, claims that he doesn’t smoke at home and that when he wants to smoke, goes out onto the balcony, yet the girl, when she was informed that she would not be sleeping at home that night, began to vomit.

(News: Jaen, Andalucia)