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She got the idea from a male friend. When the relationship with her partner started to go awry, she recommended that they sign a consent form every time they had an intimate encounter. She looked up a sample document with the help of artificial intelligence (ChatGPT) and downloaded a blank copy. At first it was "a game", a piece of paper on which she put her name, address, ID number and schedule, and then they both signed it. They even went so far as to use Alexa to control the times of the authorised sex.
In the end, she reported him to the police for rape. He defended himself with these "contracts" that would prove consent, but she tried to counter the value of these documents under the argument that "the act" ended 15 minutes after the permitted time slot. The judge, however, dismissed the case on the grounds that the timetable of consent could not be understood "with such a strict character". So says the dismissal order, to which SUR newspaper has had access.
It all began in April when the man, who lives in Barcelona, received a notification from the court to go and collect some documents of interest to him. The lawyer and criminologist Pablo de Palacio, who is now giving him legal advice and who is helping to reconstruct the story for the media, says that his client was "perplexed" when he realised that he was being summoned to testify as a person under investigation because his partner had denounced him for an alleged sexual assault.
The woman told the judge that, after six years of living together, the relationship had become "cold and unsustainable" in recent months. She said that, the night before while they were at their shared home, he told her that he was thinking of separating and she told him to do what he wanted but that he would have to pay her some benefits for all the time she had spent looking after the home.
After this heads-up, he allegedly changed his attitude and said that they should "fix the relationship", according to her version of the proceedings. "We had a couple of consensual kisses and then he wanted to have sex. I did not want to have sex, but I finally agreed because of his pressure and insistence," she said in her police statement.
The woman admitted to the judge that her intention was not to report him, but that the following day he reproached her for "some issues from the past" and ended up asking to separate again. "Having thought about it to myself," she continued, "I have taken the step of denouncing his sexual aggression yesterday, as the relations we had were the result of his insistence and pressure, but no way did I want to proceed, so I understand that my sexual rights were violated."
When he found out that he had been reported, the man presented a document to the court in which he stated that his ex-partner wanted to "ruin his life" and accompanied it with the consent form signed by both of them. "Luckily we signed the document that proves that she wanted to have sexual relations, I enclose it so that your honour may have it on record and condemn my ex-partner for filing a false police report," he stated.
The form downloaded from the internet and signed by both parties for each sexual encounter read as follows: "By means of this document, I, ..., of legal age, with ID card..., freely, spontaneously and voluntarily, hereby consent to be penetrated vaginally (not orally or anally, which will require another consent if necessary) by her sexual partner D....at the address C/.... in Barcelona, provided that the sexual act takes place between 10.30pm and 10.55pm on the day indicated, and this consent shall lapse once the authorised time has elapsed."
When she was notified that he had submitted as evidence the consent form signed by both of them, the woman presented a new document to the judge: "I do not deny that sexual relations took place between 10.30 and 10.55pm, as the document says, but he finished the act at 11.10pm, as your honour can verify (sic) when the time I had authorised him had passed, so he sexually assaulted me for 15 minutes because my prior consent did not exist." So she declared that the law on sexual consent applied to this case (known as the 'sólo sí es sí', 'only a yes means yes').
The judge did not take long to reach a decision. A week after the case was filed, the magistrate issued an order of provisional dismissal with the following statement: "Well, this court understands that sexual consent, as a manifestation of the internal will tending towards the performance of a sexual act, cannot be subordinated in such a strict manner to specific hours and minutes so that the delay in the completion of the act becomes a punishable act that deserves the reproach of this court of law's jurisdiction."
The man spoke on the Spanish TV programme on Antena 3, 'Y Ahora Sonsoles', that the case has had serious repercussions in his life. In his personal life he said that many mutual friends turned their backs on him when they heard about the complaint. At work a colleague even asked for a change of position. He has now put the case in the hands of the lawyer De Palacio, who collaborates with Ferox Abogados, to study the possibility of taking legal action against her for allegedly making a false accusation.
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