The Supreme Court of Croatia rejected the appeal of a man from Split who was sentenced to 40 years in prison for 267 criminal acts of sexual abuse and exploitation of a child, the Dalmatian portal reports.
It all started in 2018 when the girl was only five years old and lasted for the next five years. Her father raped her once a week on average, and every two days for the last month. Except for the first rape that happened in the camp near Šibenik, everything happened in the family apartment.
He wouldn’t let her out of the house for days
The mother of the victim and the defendant’s wife is seriously ill and her condition rapidly deteriorated. The defendant protected his daughter from social contacts, took her to school and welcomed her after classes so that she would not socialize with other children.
He did not allow her to visit her grandparents who live in the same building. He would not let her out of the house for days, and when he was dissatisfied with her behavior, he would hit her on the head and stomach. He forced her to bathe naked in front of him in the bathtub for hours.
The final judgment in this case was passed in June last year. The judge of the County Court in Split, Višnja Strinic, sentenced the defendant to 40 years in prison. The High Criminal Court upheld the verdict earlier this year.
However, since it is a sentence of long-term imprisonment, the defendant had the possibility of appealing to the Supreme Court. He appealed on almost all grounds of appeal. He claimed that this is an extremely high sentence that deviates from the usual practice for such crimes.
Supreme Court: The punishment is not too severe
However, the Supreme Court considered that an appropriate sentence was imposed, i.e. that aggravating and mitigating circumstances were properly assessed, reports the Dalmatian portal.
“The punishment is not too severe, especially when it is taken into account that the circumstances established here are such that the sum of individually determined sentences for 267 serious criminal offenses of sexual abuse and exploitation of a child and one criminal offense of violation of a child’s rights committed between the five and ten years of a child’s life, amounts to 1388 years.
In addition, the appellant does not state what are the usual punishments in other cases in which there were comparable circumstances important for the choice of the type and measure of punishment with those determined in this case, especially in relation to the number of individual criminal acts committed”, stated the Supreme Court.
The defendant claimed that it was about educational measures and parental care
In addition, the Supreme Court emphasized that the second-instance court, when determining the prison sentence, took into account the personality of the perpetrator and the totality of the crimes committed.
“In the structure of the defendant’s personality, there are narcissistic traits that are manifested in the effort to present himself in the best and most favorable light. The defendant committed 267 serious criminal offenses of sexual abuse and exploitation of a child and one criminal offense of violation of a child’s rights, all to the detriment of his daughter between the ages of five and ten.
Such a large number of committed serious crimes must be reflected in a single prison sentence, which must be a response to the heinousness and danger of the defendant’s behavior to the detriment of his own child, who was almost completely left to his care because the mother is immobile,” the Supreme Court’s verdict reads.
In the appeal, the defendant tried to portray his actions as educational measures and parental care. He tried to justify the fact that he forced his daughter to bathe naked in front of him for hours with obsessive compulsive disorder.
“However, it indisputably follows from all the presented evidence that it is not a question of parental care, but of gross sexual, psychological, physical and emotional abuse of the victim. In addition, the conducted psychiatric examination completely eliminated the existence of obsessive compulsive disorder in the defendant”, concluded the panel of the Supreme Court presided over by Judge Damir Kos.
(TYPE/Source: Index.hr/Photo: Illustration/Index)
