A military tribunal is investigating a sergeant in the Guardia Civil for allegedly sexually abusing a guardswoman over a period of four years.
Amongst other charges he is accused of forcing her to have an abortion after falling pregnant as a result of being raped. He is facing 15 years in a military prison.
The case was brought before Juzgado Militar Territorial Número 14 in Murcia by the Asociación Unificada de Guardia Civiles (the unofficial Guardia Civil union) and consequently Sergeant O.M.G. (no puns, please) was suspended from his post. However the GHQ of the Guardia Civil were informed by letter about the situation back in December 2015.
The victim, a middle-aged officer with a young son, has been on sick leave since March 2015.
The Guardia Civil union, AUGC, is calling for the court process to be converted to a civilian system to avoid having to go through the military hierarchy.
Her defence lawyer says that her client “knows how perverse the [military] system can be,” adding, “it’s a torture that victims suffer because they know that to show pain is considered a symptom of weakness.”
The situation goes back to 2012 when the sergeant returned off paternity leave, which was when the first rape allegedly took place. She also received up to 50 calls a day from him afterwards, as well as lurid SMS’s, she states.
That same year the sergeant – her section chief – discovered that she had fallen pregnant which resulted in his reported comment, “Get that out of there; you’re not going to bugger up my life.”
Not only did he force her to have an abortion, the charge reads, but he also made her show him the bill from the abortion clinic.
In 2013 a lieutenant realised what was going on and filed a report before the judicial branch of Spanish Army, but nothing came of it after his commanding officer, a captain, shelved the report; not before taking out a disciplinary report against the lieutenant.
February 2014 saw the same captain open a ‘reserved information’ report… against the victim. In the meantime he also had another report from a guardsman who knew what was happening shelved. Unfortunately for the commanding officer, (the captain) the said guardsman had also complained directly to the judicial service of the police union.
Yet all this time the sexual vexations continued and the sergeant carried out petty punishments (unsocial shift work or making her report to the post at six in the morning with her young child before taking him to school) if she did not comply with his sexual demands.
Only in December 2015 did the GHQ act but until this time the sergeant was free to carry on with impunity.
(News: Murcia, Spain)