A contestant on the Spanish version of the reality show “Big Brother” has been sentenced to fifteen months in prison for sexually assaulting another candidate in 2017, the Spanish Department of Justice announced in a press release on Monday.
A Madrid court that heard the case banned him from approaching or communicating with the victim for four years and ordered him to pay her 6,000 euros for “moral damages”.
In the press release, the producers of the show have to pay the same amount to the victim. The government sought two-and-a-half years in prison.
The scene happened during the 2017 filming of “Gran Hermano” (Big Brother in Spanish), a show broadcast by Telecinco, Spain’s most watched channel.
The show consists of locking a group of people in a house and continuously filming them, with the audience having to eliminate the candidates one by one.
According to the magistrate who heard the case, the accused, who started a romantic relationship with the victim during the event, “removed his pants while they were in the same bed before starting to perform movements of a sexual nature.
However, the judge’s press release continues that the victim was “under the influence of alcohol” and told him in a weak voice, “I can’t.”
“The amorous movements of the criminal continued for several minutes, until the victim (…) showed that she was completely passive, which led to the intervention of one of the members of the project”, and the judge pointed out.
The affair erupted in 2019, two years after the shooting, when the press revealed that the young woman had been asked to comment on camera the next day in a so-called “confession” room.
A video of the hearing, later released by an online media outlet, shows her tearfully pleading with him to stop airing the images. The contestant was evicted from the show.
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