Outrageous case of Spanish girl raped by five thugs

There are times when you read a story in the news and shudder with outrage and disgust. Such is the case with the 18-year-old girl who was grabbed by five thugs in Pamplona, the famous bull-running city, forced into a basement and raped. At their trial the judge ruled it wasn't rape because there was no violence or intimidation and so they then faced a lesser charge of sexual abuse. The judge's ruling has now been upheld by the Spanish appeals court which made the following judgement: being seized by five men and taken into a basement to be raped did not necessarily indicate there was intimidation even though it was five men against one girl. And there was "no violence" involved. Apparently in the view of the Appeals Court judges who I assume learnt their profession from the manuals of the Spanish Inquisition, the act of sex against the will of the victim does not involve violence. According to the police report she kept her eyes closed throughout her ordeal. The judges interpreted that as "passive" suffering, not terrified suffering. It is beyond belief that a member of the European community can have a legal system which allows five men to take a girl off the streets and rape her in a basement and judge the incident to be sexual abuse rather than a gross example of rape. The Spanish Supreme Court will now hear the case. I know we are about to leave the European Union - or may be not - but one of the criteria for allowing a country to join the EU is that it must guarantee the same moral and human rights values as set down in the original European charter. The fact that Spanish men and women have been protesting at the outrageous court judgment in the case of this poor girl shows that Spain's legal system is way way behind the accepted level of decency, wisdom and justice.