The Prosecutor’s Office maintains the request for three years in prison for Víctor G.T for the three-year harassment of the writer, painter and illustrator Paula Bonet after the trial was held in the Criminal Court number 10 of Barcelona. The private accusation, which represents the victim, asks for 4 years while the accused’s lawyer demands his acquittal or that a defense for psychic alteration be taken into account. In this sense, he presented a medical report in which he indicates that the defendant suffers from an “erotomanic delusional” disorder and was medicated since he approached the painter, although some of the forensic documents provided to the procedure indicate that he knew what he was doing.
The trial was held behind closed doors to protect the victim. However, judicial sources indicate that the accused declared that he was interested in her work and after a talk with the artist “I saw that she was looking at me, I thought she liked it. Then I found out that she had a partner. I thought she was interested in me”, In addition, she explained that she apologized after the first complaints and that when she made the harassment public through the networks she suffered “a public lynching”.
That is why he explained that the messages, in which he threatened the victim to strangle her and dismember her “to please all the miserable vagabonds who live in the streets of Barcelona”, were to “defend himself” and assured that he had been threatened and assaulted. “It was an outburst” in a moment of “sarcasm” he declared and added that the flowers or the cut eel that he left in front of the painter’s workshop door was a “game” as “it shows that he does not agree with the aggressors”, although he signed that note as “the rapist”.
For her part, the victim, who testified behind a screen to avoid a visual confrontation with the defendant, recounted the ordeal she suffered from the harassment to which she was subjected and how that situation altered her personal and professional life. In addition, she pointed out that she has had to undergo psychological treatment for this harassment and that she has feared for her life and that of her relatives.
After the trial, the Prosecutor’s Office maintains its request for three years in prison and a fine for the crimes of coercion and threats, as well as a fine of 4,800 euros for the defendant for a continued crime of breach of precautionary measure. The private prosecution asks for a total of four years in prison for the same two crimes, with a fine of 8,640 for repeatedly skipping the restraining orders against the victim.
The harassment began in July 2019, when Víctor G.T. He showed up at the artist’s workshop with the intention of meeting her, and he suddenly hugged her, although she managed to get her to leave her. In the following months he appeared repeatedly at her place, insisting both to her and to her students that he wanted to meet her, something that the illustrator and painter always refused. On one of those occasions, the defendant repeatedly banged on the glass of the door asking for her, raising and lowering her blind, and pressing her lips to the glass with the intention of kissing her.
In addition, at that time he tried to get closer to Bonet by going to the same events that she went to, and also tried to get her attention through several emails. It was from her first complaints that she began to send messages on social networks in which she threatened Bonet, which led to a restraining order and communications against the artist. However, the defendant continued to communicate with her through social networks, in which he told her that he wanted to attend her workshops or poured humiliating messages against her.
Despite the restraining order and the fact that the victim changed workshops, he returned to the premises with a bouquet of flowers, which led to a call to the Mossos d’Esquadra, who managed to convince him to leave the place. She stayed to sleep in the workshop for fear of finding him accompanied by some students, and that same night she saw him appear trying to look out the window to try to talk to her, which prompted a new police call.
Given the violation of the restraining order, the court ordered his admission to provisional prison, although he left a few weeks ago, which caused Bonet to cancel his public life due to the fear caused by the presence of the accused.
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