The Provincial Court of Pontevedra has issued a search and arrest warrant against the religious Segundo Cousido Vieites, sentenced by this court to 32 and a half years in prison for sexually abusing six minors. As a religion teacher at the Salesianos de Vigo school, this priest was in charge of children and, according to two different sentences, abused six 15-year-olds.
The abuses occurred in 2019 during a camp in Cambados (Pontevedra), in a pilgrimage activity to Santiago de Compostela and also in the framework of the activities of a youth association in Vigo led by the convicted person.
In October 2021 he was sentenced by the fourth section of the Provincial Court and in May 2022 the Superior Court of Xustiza de Galicia (TSXG) confirmed the ruling. However, the numerous appeals presented by the religious "caused the start of the execution of the sentence to be delayed." Finally, it was firm at the end of October and on November 16, 2022, the Provincial Court of Pontevedra began the procedures.
Official sources of the TSXG have confirmed to EL MUNDO that once all these procedures were carried out, last Thursday, February 23, the Court gave an "unpostponable" period of three days for him to enter prison. The religious disregarded that order and the court confirmed this week that he did not appear in prison, which is why he decided to issue a search and capture order and request his immediate arrest. That order was sent to the Salesian congregation.
Segundo Cousido was sentenced for seven crimes of sexual abuse, three of them continued, to those 32 and a half years in prison and also to 36 years of probation, the impossibility of working with minors for 31 years after the prison sentence and the payment of compensation of 76,000 euros to the six minors.
The sentence concludes that he "took advantage" of his situation of superiority, the trust that the minors had placed in him and the friendship relationship that united them, "which went beyond that of teacher-student", to abuse them.
The religious acted to "get his sexual desire satisfied" at night, when, according to the sentence, "alertness decreases and the level of consciousness decreases", overcoming any "possible resistance" of the victims.
The six minors were victims of touching their genital organs, usually over their clothes, although, on occasion, also underneath. All of them narrated "firmly and in accordance with their age" what happened to them and what they saw regarding the others, with a complaint in which they were "coherent".
The Pontevedra court first and the Galician court called attention to the fact that the minors came to express a "feeling of guilt" for not having known how to react at that moment. The magistrates of the Court of Pontevedra who judged the case in first instance also highlighted that the adolescents lack "spurious motivation, hostility or interest" in harming the accused, whom they considered "their friend or their reference" and with whom all of them They had a "good relationship".
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