People shout slogans while holding signs during a protest outside the City of Justice, after a Spanish court on Thursday sentenced five men accused of the group rape of an 18-year-old woman at the 2016 San Fermin bull-running festival each to nine years in prison for the lesser charge of sexual abuse, in Valencia, Spain April 27, 2018. REUTERS/Heino Kalis? - RC121CBBB710
For the second time, a Spanish court has refused to convict five men of gang rape for an attack on an 18-year-old woman during the San Fermin bull-running festival in July 2016.
A lower court last year convicted the five men – known as “La Manada” and dubbed “The Wolf Pack” – of sexual abuse and sentenced them to nine years in prison.
The ruling triggered widespread protests in two dozen Spanish cities by women’s rights advocates angry about what they saw as the court’s leniency.
Prosecutors argued the men boasted about the attack in a basement in the city of Pamplona, with some of them even filming the crime on their phones. Those videos were shared in a WhatsApp chat group entitled “La Manada.”
On Wednesday, the Navarra Superior Court ruled the five men did not use force, though the judges did hold that the men took advantage of the woman's vulnerability.
Under current Spanish law, an offense of rape has to involve sexual assault, which must include violence or intimidation. Among those outraged by the initial verdict was Pedro Sanchez, the newly elected prime minister who has promised to introduce a new law on sexual consent.
According to the BBC, two of the five appeals judges said the attackers had used intimidation to carry out the “continuous offense of sexual” assault and called for a 14-year jail sentence. However, they were outvoted by the other three judges.
"We don't like it," the teenager's lawyer said after the ruling, the BBC reported.