Man found not guilty of ill-treatment because his wife liked S&M practices

The Alicante Provincial Court has found a man not guilty of domestic violence and rape, considering that there is not enough evidence to condemn the accused because it has been established that the couple regularly engaged in sadomasochistic activities.

The court heard how the couple had engaged in erotic games in their villa in l’Alfàs del Pi since 1990, a fact which the magistrates said was determinant in finding the accused not guilty. The prosecutor had called for a 12 year prison sentence and 30,000 € fine.

The alleged victim turned to the Violence against Women Court in Benidorm in 2008 to denounced the ill-treatment suffered at the hands of her husband, claiming that he forced her to have sex.
She claimed the couple’s relationship had deteriorated after the birth of their second daughter ‘because her husband did not help with the housework’.

The Court in Alicante considered that there was no evidence in addition to the victim’s statement, and that this was ‘of special relevance’. They said that the sadism could imply bruises in the couple and behaviour of dominance by one and submission by other, in which fictitious situations of resistance would be created. ‘The refusal of the woman to have sex could be framed in such a fantasy’.