Accused of Sexual Assault: Urgent Criminal Defence

A sexual assault accusation can produce devastating consequences from the first moment, even before any judicial resolution: job loss, social stigma, breakdown of personal relationships, pretrial detention and civil precautionary measures affecting the home, children or assets. The presumption of innocence enshrined in Art. 24.2 of the Spanish Constitution is an inderogable constitutional rule until a final judgment overturns it through valid, sufficient and incriminating evidence. Consolidated Supreme Court case-law assesses the victim's statement, when it is the sole incriminating evidence, against three parameters that serve as guidance —they are neither legal requirements nor cumulative—: absence of subjective unreliability (absence of spurious motives), plausibility (corroboration through peripheral elements) and persistence in incrimination (internal coherence without essential contradictions).

The substantive normative framework has undergone deep reforms. Organic Law 10/2022 (known as "Only yes means yes") consolidated all crimes against sexual freedom around the concept of consent, eliminating the classical distinction between assault and abuse. Organic Law 4/2023 introduced corrective adjustments to penalties. The basic type of sexual assault (Art. 178 CP) carries 1 to 4 years of prison; when penetration concurs (Art. 179 CP), 4 to 12 years; with aggravating factors of Art. 180 CP (special vulnerability, joint action, use of weapons, special degradation), up to 15 years. Sexual offences against minors under 16 (Arts. 181-183 CP) are specific and especially severe. Supreme Court case-law has clarified the consent concept, requiring it to be free, conscious, expressly manifested or through unequivocal conclusive acts, and reversible at any time.

The accessory consequences of a sexual offence conviction are as serious as or more than custodial penalties. Registration in the Central Sex Offenders Registry (RD 1110/2015) has prolonged duration (cancelled under the criminal-record rules if the victim was an adult and 30 years after the sentence is served if the victim was a minor) and prevents working in any sphere involving habitual contact with minors: education, paediatric healthcare, sports, entertainment, school transport. Special disqualification from any profession or trade involving contact with minors lasts 2 to 20 years longer than the prison term imposed, 5 to 20 if the offence is serious (Art. 192.3 CP). Derivative civil precautionary measures may affect child custody, visitation regime, family home attribution and compensatory provision. The prohibition of approach to the victim may be immediate from the investigation phase. Civil liability for moral damages is set by the court case by case (the Act 35/2015 compensation schedule, designed for road accidents, is only a guide) and can reach high figures in serious cases.

Specialized technical defence is built on four axes. First, the critical analysis of the victim's statement: settled Supreme Court case-law assesses it with the three classic parameters, which are guidance rather than legal requirements (absence of subjective unreliability, plausibility corroborated by peripheral data and persistence in the accusation); psychological credibility expert evidence (CBCA-SVA, Statement Validity Analysis) allows examining the internal consistency of the narrative, identifying essential contradictions, evaluating possible third-party or external-factor influence. Second, error of type (Art. 14 CP) due to reasonable and founded belief in the existence of consent: when the accused, based on behaviour, words, conclusive acts and the relationship context, in good faith believed there was consent, typical intent is excluded. Third, exculpatory digital evidence: pre- and post-encounter WhatsApp messages, GPS location, video surveillance cameras, hotel and transport records, social media communications that can prove the consented nature of the interaction or dismantle the victim's version. Fourth, the challenge of prosecution expert evidence: questioning the methodology of credibility expert reports proposed by the accusation, examining expert qualification, articulating own forensic counter-experts.

In current forensic practice, sexual offence proceedings concentrate in a dual critical phase: the first 72 hours after detention, when fundamental decisions must be made on the investigated's statement, precautionary measures and securing exculpatory evidence; and the investigation phase, where credibility expert evidence is articulated, digital evidence obtaining proceedings are requested and the defence brief is prepared. Organic Law 1/2025 on Justice Service Efficiency has reorganised the courts into Courts of Instance. Constitutional case-law on legal assistance and Supreme Court doctrine on penalty proportionality configure a complex scenario. At Alonso Sala, our criminal lawyers specialized in defence of the accused of sexual offences intervene from legal assistance to the detained, articulate credibility expert reports with qualified forensic psychologists, coordinate forensic dumps of electronic devices to obtain exculpatory digital evidence, and build procedural strategies aimed at the presumption of innocence, avoiding pretrial detention when possible, raising evidentiary nullities and articulating rigorous technical defences that respect the dignity of the defendant and the alleged victim, without commercial promises about outcomes but with the professional diligence demanded by the gravity of what is at stake.