Private Prosecution Lawyer · Sexual Offence Victims

Private Prosecution: Procedural Position

At Alonso Sala we also act for victims of sexual offences as private prosecution, a procedural role that allows the injured party to intervene actively in the criminal proceedings with full rights. The private prosecution enables the injured or offended party to become a prosecuting party with full procedural capacity: proposing investigative steps, intervening in statements, filing the indictment, proposing and taking evidence at trial, characterising the facts, requesting the penalties and pursuing civil liability. Alongside the Public Prosecutor (public prosecution), the private prosecution brings the victim's direct perspective and frequently greater depth to the investigation.

The Victim Statute and Specific Rights

The Statute of the Victim of Crime (Law 4/2015), which transposed Directive 2012/29/EU, recognises a broad catalogue of rights: the right to information from the first contact with the authorities; the right to protection of the person, privacy and dignity; the right to avoid contact with the offender; the right to legal assistance and to translation and interpretation; the right to active participation in the proceedings; the right to protection against secondary victimisation; and, specifically in sexual offences, the right to free legal assistance regardless of means under LO 10/2022. LO 10/2022 reinforced specific rights for victims of sexual offences: universal free legal assistance; integrated support through crisis centres; mandatory pre-recorded evidence for minors and persons with disabilities; protection against secondary victimisation with limits on questioning about prior sexual conduct; and integration with public support resources.

Civil Liability and Reparation

The private prosecution allows a claim for civil liability ex delicto (Art. 116 CP): restitution, reparation and compensation. In sexual offences, compensation usually includes moral harm, proven psychological after-effects established by expert evidence, medical and therapeutic costs, loss of earnings arising from incapacity for work, any aesthetic harm and other heads of loss. The claim may be directed against the perpetrator and, subsidiarily, against civil liability parties (entities, insurers, premises owners). It coordinates with the Public Prosecutor, who exercises the public prosecution; the parties may converge or diverge, and the accusatory principle requires that the conviction not exceed the prosecution's claims.

Strategy for Defending the Victim

We act for the victim from the outset: advice prior to the complaint; legal assistance at the first statement; careful preparation of statements to minimise secondary victimisation; coordination with psychological and forensic experts; requesting and monitoring precautionary measures; thorough trial preparation; appealing unfavourable decisions; and enforcing the judgment to recover compensation. We act before the Investigating Courts, the Courts on Violence Against Women, the Criminal Courts, the Provincial Courts and the Prison Supervision Courts at the enforcement stage.

How the proceedings are channelled and which court has jurisdiction

A complaint or police report opens an investigation that reconstructs the facts and secures the sources of evidence. Jurisdiction depends on the classification of the offence and on the relationship between the parties. As a rule the Investigating Court of the place where the act occurred conducts the inquiry; where the victim is or has been the accused person's partner, the investigation falls to the Court for Violence against Women under Article 87 ter of the Organic Law of the Judiciary, which concentrates the criminal and connected civil matters and allows protective measures to be ordered without delay.

Trial is allocated according to the penalty in the abstract: the Criminal Court hears conduct punished with up to five years' imprisonment, and the Provincial Court the more serious offences, such as rape under Article 179, which starts at four to twelve years and rises further with the aggravating circumstances of Article 180. For the victim, identifying the competent court and the procedural stage early defines which measures to request, the deadline to appear as a party, and how to steer the evidence from the outset.

Appearing as a private prosecution: rights and the time window

The victim is not a mere witness: the Statute on the Rights of Victims of Crime (Law 4/2015) recognises the right to understand and be understood, to receive information about the case, to be notified of relevant rulings, and to take an active part. The natural channel for that participation is to appear as a private prosecution through a lawyer and court representative, which allows the victim to request investigative steps, question witnesses, appeal rulings, and frame their own classification and sentencing request independently of the Public Prosecutor's stance.

Such appearance must be sought in good time, before the indictment stage, so as not to be merely attached without the ability to drive the case forward. Where the victim's financial situation warrants it, the right to legal assistance for the defence of their interests applies. Appearing early helps avoid secondary victimisation: it orders the hearings, prevents needless repetition of the account, and ensures that requests for protection and evidence are filed while they can still take effect.

The evidence: corroborated testimony, forensic, toxicology and digital trail

In these offences the victim's testimony can sustain a conviction, but courts assess it looking for the absence of improper motives, consistency, and above all peripheral corroboration. Hence the importance of preserving every objective element from the start: the forensic medical examination, injury reports, biological samples, and the chain of custody. Where chemical submission is suspected, toxicology has a very short window, so the speed of sample collection is decisive.

LO 10/2022 places consent, freely expressed through acts that clearly convey it, at the centre of the trial, which shapes what must be proven. Where the acts were committed through electronic means, digital evidence becomes valuable: messages, metadata, geolocation, and images, which should be preserved without tampering. For victims under fourteen and persons with disabilities needing special protection, the law provides for pre-constituted evidence, taking the statement once with full adversarial guarantees so as to avoid repeated questioning.

Reinforced prescription for minors, consequences for the convicted person, and reparation

Protection of a child victim extends to limitation periods. Article 132.1 of the Penal Code, following Organic Law 8/2021, provides that for offences against sexual freedom and indemnity committed against minors the period does not begin to run until the victim turns thirty-five, opening a real window to report in adulthood. It is worth checking the date of the facts, because conduct predating the reform retains the count from the age of eighteen.

Beyond the criminal reproach, a conviction carries specific consequences: post-release supervised liberty under Article 192, from five to ten years where the offence is serious and from one to five years where it is less serious, and registration and duties in the sex-offender register that condition access to professions involving habitual contact with minors. Relevant to the victim are civil liability and protective measures, as well as understanding the scope of any plea agreement or of the modifying circumstances, which may aggravate or mitigate the response without displacing the right to effective reparation.