The defendant acknowledges in the trial that he beat and caused an intestinal perforation to his son, who was admitted to the ICU of the General Hospital for 18 days.

Closed MAR 02, 2025 6:00 AM

A court in Alicante has sentenced a 26-year-old man to two years in prison for beating and causing injuries to his seven-month-old baby, but the defendant, who was in pre-trial detention after his arrest in 2021, will not enter prison as the sentence agreed to suspend the execution of the custodial sentence on the condition that he does not commit a crime for the next two years years.

The accused, defended by lawyers Francisco Miguel Galiana Botella and Alicia Grau Córdoba, was initially investigated as the alleged perpetrator of a crime of attempted homicide, but the conviction has finally been for a crime of injury.

The baby, who is now 4 years old, was admitted to the Paediatric ICU of the General Hospital of Alicante for 18 days, where there were fears for his life after his admission with an intestinal perforation, but fortunately he recovered from the injuries. The Generalitat assumed parental authority over the minor after the arrest of his parents, who were then 22 years old. The mother was also investigated in court, although the case was finally dismissed for her.

The sentence has been handed down by the Criminal Court number 10 of Alicante after an agreement reached in the trial between the defense and the Prosecutor’s Office, which initially requested a sentence of five years in prison for serious injuries.

The ruling condemns the father of the minor as the perpetrator of a crime of injury with the aggravating circumstances of treachery and kinship and the mitigating circumstances of confession and reparation of damage, since before the trial he paid 4,477 euros for the civil liability claimed to compensate the minor. The compensation was paid with the 6,000 euros bail that the defendant paid to be released from prison.

In addition to the two years in prison, the ruling also imposes on the defendant a three-year ban from approaching within 300 meters of his son and from communicating with him by any means, as well as three years of special disqualification from exercising parental authority over his minor son. However, as he has withdrawn parental authority since the events occurred, he would only have three months left to serve three months of the three-year period established in the sentence. Once he has completed it, he can undertake another administrative process in order to try to recover parental authority.

He alleged a domestic accident

The defendant, who until now alleged that his son suffered a domestic accident at the home in Alicante and hit himself with a toy when he fell from a sofa, pleaded guilty at the oral hearing and acknowledged the facts of which the Prosecutor’s Office was accusing him.

The facts declared proven in the judgment occurred during the afternoon of May 27, 2021 in Alicante. The defendant was alone in the care of his seven-month-old son in the home he shared with his partner and the child’s mother. At an undetermined time that day, he was in the company of the minor in the couple’s room and “gave him several blows with such forcefulness that the minor had to be operated on in the emergency room for a jejunal perforation and mesointestinal hematoma”. The minor took 22 days to heal from the intestinal perforation, of which four days were in hospital and 18 days he was admitted to the pediatric ICU of the Doctor Balmis General Hospital in Alicante.

The judgment specifies that the minor does not suffer “anatomical functional sequelae” because of these injuries and has been left with a “slight scar from central abdominal laparotomy” as an aesthetic damage, as stated in the judgment.

The parents were arrested by the Police after alerting the Hospital of the admission of a baby with injuries that were not compatible with the domestic accident described by his parents. The little boy was alone with his father and was taken to the hospital after the mother arrived home and started vomiting.