MADRID (AFP) – A Spanish court has jailed a woman for five years for repeatedly filing false reports about her ex-husband sexually abusing their daughter.
According to El Mundo daily, the sentence was unprecedented in Spain.
In a ruling handed down by a court in the southern city of Granada which was seen by AFP yesterday, the unnamed woman was convicted of filing false allegations, offences against moral integrity and abandonment of parental responsibility.
She was also ordered to pay EUR40,000 each to the child and her father for the harm caused by her unfounded allegations, which were aimed at securing sole custody of her daughter, now nine.
The court also took away the mother’s parental responsibility for 10 years on grounds she posed “a threat to (her daughter’s) development”, according to court documents dated on Monday.
The woman had filed eight reports to the police and the courts over a two-year period, accusing her husband of abuse and on one occasion rape as they were in the throes of getting divorced.
She also took her daughter to be examined by doctors and psychologists on 10 separate occasions.
None of them ever found any evidence of the alleged abuse.
The ongoing gynaecological and psychological examinations had an impact on the child’s “psychological stability and her performance at school”, according to the court documents.
The aim was to “obtain the sole and exclusive custody” of their daughter. The sentence, which can be appealed, described the mother as a person with a predisposition for “lying” who displayed “shameless cynicism” and “cunning malice with obsessive overtones”.
