Overview
- Prosecutors in Vigo have set an oral hearing for a delito leve for July 1 to examine criminal, civil or disciplinary claims against a Pontevedra lawyer accused of masturbating during a roughly six-minute videoconference with a female client.
- The woman says the lawyer, who represented her in a gender-violence case, was seated in a car with his pants down and that she captured a screenshot showing him naked from the waist down.
- An investigating judge provisionally shelved the complaint in January after finding no elements of aggression, coercion or punishable exhibitionism between adults, but the Audiencia Provincial of Pontevedra overturned that decision on appeal in April.
- The appellate order required the court to take the victim’s sworn statement and to obtain the Vigo Bar Association’s disciplinary file so the judge can assess whether the facts fit sexual harassment with professional prevalence, lesions psíquicas, an offence against sexual freedom, or another charge.
- The lawyer has been removed from the duty legal aid roster and faces possible administrative or civil sanctions in addition to the July criminal hearing, with the victim’s emergency-room report cited as evidence of anxiety and medication after the incident.