- The attack happened in a Peñaflor, Seville school in May
Eight boys accused of gang-raping a disabled classmate in a Spanish school will not be investigated as they are under the age of 14, prosecutors have revealed.
The attack on a 12-year-old disabled girl occurred in a Peñaflor, Seville school in May, according to a police report filed by the child’s family.
The police document said that the girl was ‘removed from the sight of students and teachers and taken to the girl’s bathroom’ during a break, where the gang-rape allegedly occurred.
Speaking to Spanish television program ‘Y Ahora Sonsoles’ the girl’s distressed grandmother, whose identity was not shared, detailed the horrifying incident.
‘They grabbed my hands and they opened my legs and they made love to me’, the girl reportedly told her grandmother, to which she responded: ‘No my dear, that’s not making love’.
Distressed grandparents (who did not share their identities) of a 12-year-old disabled girl who was gangraped by eight classmates while at school in Seville last month detailed the horrific attack
‘They grabbed my hands and spread my legs’, the 12-year-old girl told her mother after she was attacked
The gang-rape occurred in the Sevillian town of Peñaflor. Pictured: Peñaflor town hall
Her grandmother also described the ‘hell’ the young girl endured the days after, as she did not open up about her assault for several days after.
She did not want to go to school, would not eat and would not sleep, her grandmother told a separate outlet, Telemadrid.
She would also repeatedly pull her own hair and throw herself on the ground, before she finally opened up to her grandmother.
She was then taken to the hospital for an examination.
The forensic medical team confirmed that the girl had been penetrated, the grandmother told.
But since all children involved in the horrific attack were born between 2011 and 2012, making them 12 and 13 years old, means that the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office cannot carry out any kind of investigation.
According to Spanish Juvenile Law, when a perpetrator of rape is under the age of 14, he or she won’t be held liable under the law.
The case has been transferred to Child Protection Services as a result.
But the Andalusia’s Councillor for Social Inclusion, Youth, Families and Equality, said in a press conference last week that the Andalusian government is in contact with the prosecutor’s office.
‘From now on what we are going to do is put in place all the mechanisms for the protection of the girl, obviously, to fund the origin of this conduct, and based on that, adopt the appropriate measures’.
The Councilor for Social Integration, Youth, Families and Equality Loles Lopez said she is in contact with the prosecutor’s office following its decision to not investigate eight schoolboys who gangraped their disabled classmate as they are under the age of 14
Horrified Spaniards have taken to social media to express their concern over the decision to not investigate the schoolboys further.
One user on X, formerly Twitter, said: ‘If legislation is not urgently passed, these atrocities will continue, once again in a school that washes its hands’.
Another said: ‘Please, what is happening to society? Clearly we are doing it wrong and we are doing wrong to children’.
Lopez added that she is preparing a campaign for the Andalusian Institute for Women to raise awareness over consent in minors.
Just last month, a Spanish court acquitted a man who raped a 12-year-old girl and left her pregnant with twins after it ruled that their relations were just part of the gypsy culture.