It all started with a sticker, an image created from a photo and shared with the mobile. The sergeant in question “enjoyed a certain sympathy among the troops because of the closeness he showed with them at the expense of the jokes he played.” He allowed himself to be called “bald” or “fat” and in return he baptized his subordinates with nicknames, for example, calling one “hobbit“, as one of the races of the lord of the rings, due to his short stature. Some “laughed thank you,” but one soldier, who was the object of their ridicule, did not. He gave him the first warning when he discovered that he had done a sticker that was already circulating among the entire unit and the problem escalated when, reprimanded by a captain, the sergeant made her the protagonist of sexual comments. “Your colleagues are going to do something to you.” open it“, he even told him in reference to the practice of collective ejaculation on a person. The Supreme Court has confirmed the sentence that a military court imposed on him for these events.
The Military Chamber endorses the sentence of one year in prison that the Third Territorial Military Court agreed against the sergeant for insults. The sentence, to which EL PAÍS has had access, describes a situation of “familiarity” that led to “abuse of authority.” The uniformed man asked his subordinates, “if it bothered them” about the way he used to refer to them, “to tell him,” but “it didn’t seem to bother them.” The soldier, who had recently arrived at the unit, “did not have any familiarity” with him. The first episode occurred during a break from daily work. She realized that the sergeant was taking photos of them with his cell phone and then discovered that a rumor was circulating among his colleagues. sticker yours chewing lunch. “He didn’t find it funny” and he complained directly to the sergeant, to whom he made it clear that “he wasn’t here to fool around,” but to “work.”
This incident had “some significance,” to the point that a captain ordered the sergeant “not to do it anymore” and forced anyone who had the photograph to delete it. Months later, at the end of a shooting exercise, and when only she was left to get on the truck, the sergeant urged her to do it in a particular way: “That your companions are going to do a bukake for you” (sexual practice by which several men ejaculate on a woman’s face). In a last episode, after she cut her hair, he asked her in front of other soldiers “if she had become a lesbian and if she now used rubber penises.”
The ruling reflects that this behavior caused the sergeant a “feeling of contempt and humiliation.” “She was increasingly depressed and very burnt out” and ended up on sick leave due to anxiety, details the high court.
The dignity of women is “irremediably damaged”
However, the sergeant appealed the sentence, alleging that his actions were due to his “joking nature” and that, in any case, it should be considered a disciplinary offense, not a crime. The Supreme Court rejects it categorically.
Firstly, the Fifth Chamber rules out that the soldier had “animosity” towards her superior and therefore made up a “fabulated” story. Quite the contrary, he emphasizes that his testimony has been corroborated by several colleagues.
And, secondly, the high court is “clear” that the sergeant’s comments “are objectively offensive and humiliating.” In this sense, he emphasizes that “they inevitably provoke in their listeners the mental representation of the scenes they describe”, “causing the humiliation and public shame of the soldier, whose dignity, fame and esteem are irreparably damaged.”
