A father from Gran Canaria is likely to spend the next 36 years in prison after admitting a string of sexual abuse committed against his own young daughter and the daughter of his partner.
A trial in the Criminal Court in Las Palmas heard yesterday that both girls were aged just four when the horrific abuse began in the family home and also in the defendant’s computer shop.
The man stood accused of a host of offences but admitted all the charges on the opening day of the trial. It emerged that he had first come to the police’s attention after he reported that, through his computer work, he had discovered a child pornography ring.
However, the discovery of evidence that he had paid to access illegal sites with images of young children raised officers’ suspicions and he was already under discreet investigation when his daughter disclosed that had been repeatedly abused.
Also in the dock was his former partner, who is charged with not just allowing her own child to be abused repeatedly but also taking an active part in many of the sexual activities in which the girls were forced to participate. The woman insisted that she had been coerced into participating and alleged that she and the girls had been given “a strange blue drink” beforehand.
The court heard that the couple recorded the acts – committed over a period of three years between 2019 and 2022 – on mobile phones. One officer from the police’s IT Forensic Investigation Unit described the images discovered on the phones and other devices seized as “the worst she had ever seen in 23 years in the force”. Police continue to examine hundreds of images of other children, as yet unidentified, stored on the devices.
In video evidence heard in court, the defendant’s daughter described how she had been subjected to sex acts on “more than a hundred occasions” up to the age of eight.
The revelations have shocked the island, with criticism levelled at the prosecution for reducing its initial demand for a 42-year jail term just because the defendant admitted his crimes in court. After hearing expert evidence discrediting his ex-partner’s account that she had acted under duress and was not aware of her actions, prosecutors reiterated their request for the full 42 years for the woman, with a further two years for neglecting her duty of care to her own daughter.
