“She’s victim zero of La Chaparra,” her lawyer said of Uncle Toni’s daughter-in-law. This sentence sums up the tour de force with which the defense of the two main defendants – the daughter-in-law and the wife of the spiritual guru – played to exonerate them in the trial against the sex sect led for 30 years by Antonio Garrigós, who died in prison, in the Vistabella farm, in the interior of Castellón.
The lawyer requested free acquittal of the two crimes of continuous sexual abuse, also involving minors, and illicit association, of which the prosecution accuses them, presenting them as one victim among others and mitigating any responsibility since their “will” had been “cancelled”.
The prosecution, after modifying their sentences, requested 115 years in prison for them: 50 years for sexual abuse and two years for belonging to the organization of which the leader was a romantic partner; and 61 years for abuse and two for illicit association for the daughter-in-law. The “zero victim” of La Chaparra, underlined the lawyer. Captured by the leader at the age of 15 through her parents, she claims to have been mistreated by him at the family home. In his testimony, he also explained that when he was 16, he used the “little machine” – a sexual stimulation device – on her to “break the blockage in my ovaries”. It was Garrigós himself who married her to his son. One more sign that his “voluntary capacity was seriously impaired”.
This Thursday, the trial reached sentencing after 16 sessions and a huge parade of witnesses and experts. A closing in which the rest of the defenses of the four other accused – three women and a man – also requested the acquittal of their clients.
“We are not going to deny that this is a deeply destructive and dangerous cult,” the lawyer began. This reality “also affected my clients.” Expressing his “respect for all victims” who reported sexual abuse when they were minors in La Chaparra, the lawyer acknowledged that such abuse had occurred. “It’s obvious.” But committed only by the leader, he underlined in his final report, after the prosecutor’s turn on Wednesday and the accusations, which left no doubt about the involvement of the two women – as members of the leader’s closest entourage – in the commission of abuse against minors, either as co-authors or as necessary collaborators. For the prosecutor, Uncle Toni was an “unscrupulous sexual predator” who used this “group of women” to commit “aberrant acts” against minors, to whom he granted total “credibility” in his “chilling testimonies”, which relate rapes, masturbation and pornographic projections. Facts in which several of the victims place the members of this circle close to Garrigós.
The defense attorney went in the opposite direction and for two hours demolished the idea of the existence of a hierarchy that would act as the executive arm of the spiritual guide to exonerate Uncle Toni’s wife and daughter-in-law from any criminal liability. “Antonio Garrigós was the central figure, the leader and the one who really made all of this happen. That’s indisputable.” He acted “in a very personal way,” he stressed.
“The vast majority of abuses were committed by Toni alone. He did not need collaborators or the complicity of anyone,” said the lawyer, to establish that his clients “did not make decisions, did not manage anything, did not indoctrinate or recruit anyone, did not do espionage or control work.” These are, he says, two other victims: “Garrigos deceived and abused my clients; they suffered its influence with the same aggressive methodology as the others.”
Since the “profound cancellation of their will”, due to the “psychological pressure” and “coercive persuasion” of the leader, they did not have the “trigger” of what was happening until they left La Chaparra, “like the other victims”. To illustrate this checkmate of their “cognitive abilities” which distance them, he insisted, from the leadership position supported by the accusations, he appealed to the so-called “circle of the chosen seven”, promoted by Uncle Toni to organize group masturbations – in which, according to several testimonies, a minor participated – to shed light on the universe and avoid disasters. “The ‘Circle of the Chosen Seven’ came from the psychiatric center and the acute care unit. If it is not a mental disorder… When things are so obvious, there is no need for engineering, but despite this, the psychological tests were carried out, which here proved clear.”
The lawyer also confirmed, in reference to Uncle Toni’s partner and daughter-in-law, that “none of them has ever had sexual relations with minors.” The “absence of objective evidence” concerning the participation or presence in the events of the two women, and the questioning of the stories reported by certain victims, joined the defense argument to draw a scenario opposite to that proposed by the prosecution.
He also dismantled the thesis of necessary cooperation: “Toni had a voice, hands and a cell phone. He didn’t need anyone. There is no necessary cooperation, Your Honor,” he insisted. The public prosecutor says it was “impossible” that the two defendants were not aware of what was happening in the sect regarding minors, given that they were the ones who sometimes called the girls when Garrigós asked them to come to their room.
During a large part of his intervention, the defense lawyer attacked the “double standard” to which his clients were subjected and was critical: “The duty of guarantor (of the minors) belonged to the mothers who lived in La Chaparra” who, according to him, “consciously knew” of the abuse and who “are not sitting here today (in the dock).
After five hours of hearing, in which the other two defenses also presented their final reports to the court, to also demand the acquittal of their clients, the trial, one of the longest and most technically complex that the Castellón Provincial Court has heard in recent years, was heard for sentencing.
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