The Criminal Court number 5 of Almeria is scheduled to hold this Friday the trial against four managers and workers of a residence of Almeria for people with disabilities. These are accused of humiliate, harass, coerce and even attack mildly to a user of the center, who suffers from a certain degree of dependency.
The Prosecutor’s Office asks for the accused in a different way sentences of up to four years and ten months in prison for alleged crimes against moral integrity and coercion. In addition, he accuses some of them of a minor crime of injuries and another minor crime of mistreatment, for which he demands financial fines.
The Public Ministry sees evidence that the woman, who occupied an arranged place in the residence, was subjected to several months between 2016 and 2019. “degrading and discriminatory” treatment with respect to the rest of the users. According to legal sources, the victim was not given the necessary attention.
In this sense, the user of the residence he would have “thrown his food in a bad mood” at some moments. At the same time, “his privacy” would not have been respected when he spoke on the phone with family members. Likewise, he would have been prevented from “participating in recreational activities” such as excursions or other outings organized by the center.
The public accusation indicates that this type of attitude would have caused the woman “feelings of restlessness and restlessness.” In one of the episodes, the injured party was punished with “being the last to go to the shower or enter the dining room” after a dispute with the center’s staff.
According to the accusation, said decision adopted by the interdisciplinary board was maintained from July 2016 “until the end of the year” without having previously agreed on an end date for the sanction. For their part, the staff knew what this decision meant for the woman because of her “suffering”, which even He made “constant pleas” for “the punishment to stop”. It also points out another situation that took place in August 2019, when the injured party was recriminated by a caregiver for using a certain toilet that did not correspond to her at that time.
The situation would have led to a “struggle” between the two in which the worker would push the user onto the bed and give her a “bite” on the leg. In addition, he would have hit her against a closet and thrown her to the floor, as stated in the evidence presented by the accusation, which also indicates “hair pulling.”
The episode led to the expulsion of the user for five days, which was decided “unilaterally”, “without prior notice” and “in breach of the procedure established in the internal regime regulations”, which the manager would have transferred to the “personally” affected. Thus, when the woman told him that she had nowhere to go, he would have responded “‘well screw you, you’re poor and that’s why you’re here'”sense in which the presence of her brother was immediately required to take her away from the center.
The Prosecutor’s Office also narrates a third episode in which another accused would have begun to insult the victim when she was sitting in the living room in May 2019 and later gave her “a slap in the face” that caused the woman to fall to the floor and break the cup she was carrying. The oral hearing is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. in the City of Justice.