When a well-liked resident in the Valle del Guadalhorce, who ran a sweet shop, was arrested and tried for child molesting, his offspring wouldn't believe it.

Then his own granddaughters confessed what he had done to them.

The first incidents took place in 2007 with him accused of interfering with seven young girls; he gave them posters and free sweets in exchange for telling nobody about “his little secret.”

He went down for ten years’ imprisonment and in all that time his adult children would not believe that he was guilty… until their daughters told the same story.

Consequently, Tribunal Superior de Justicia de Andalucía (TSJA) has confirmed the original sentence, although they have reduced jail time down from eleven and a half years to eight years, nine months

What brought about the granddaughter (who is now 20) to come forward was when her boyfriend told her that her grandfather had done jail time for abusing children – she hadn’t known. So she checked on internet and discovered that what her boyfriend had told her was true.

The younger of the two grandchildren (now aged 16) was told by her mother (the condemned man’s daughter-in-law) that her cousin had decided to report the grandfather. The relation between the granddaughter and the grandfather had be dropped years ago because they didn’t like “granddad’s strange games,” when the whole family was out at the family’s cortijo. The mother tried to find out why but her daughter didn’t want to talk about it.

Things should have come to a head when the daughter-in-law came into a room and saw that he had her daughter in her arms and wouldn’t put her down despite her struggling to get free. She also realised that the zip on the girls trousers was open. Even so the abuse remained unreported until the older of the two granddaughters (her cousin) reported it.

Apparently, no sooner as he was released from prison, he began abusing the older of his granddaughters, who was 14 at the time, with the excuse of massaging an injury from playing volleyball. The abuse carried on until she was 16.

The original court finding had sentenced the man five years and nine months for the abuses carried out on each girl but the appeals court reduced the sentence related to the older victim because she was 14 and already an adolescent.

Editorial comment: this man had already done prison time for child abuse, so why the leniency over his acts concerning the other granddaugher?

(News/noticias: Valle de Guadalorce, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)