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The Provincial Court of Salamanca has sentenced a couple to 11 and a half years in prison for keeping a woman with a mental disability locked up in inhumane conditions and appropriating money from her bank accounts. Taking advantage of her vulnerability, and in the spirit of enrichment, they gained her trust and took her, first, to their home and then to a “squatted” home, where they kept her, locked, in unsanitary conditions.
As stated in the ruling (appeal number 27/2025), for months “they kept her locked up in the aforementioned home against her will without the necessary conditions of hygiene, habitability and health consistent with human dignity.” Specifically, the magistrates detail that she was locked in a room in the house “without light, without heating, without running water, with a lot of dirt and without toilets, so she had to relieve herself in a bucket. There was no food in the room, only a filthy mattress and a bottle of water.”
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The couple, with the intention of illicit profit, gained the trust of the victim and convinced her to go live with them. In August 2024, she was transferred to an illegally “squatted” apartment in Salamanca, where she was kept locked up against her will in the aforementioned conditions.
In the case, a third defendant is involved, who participated as an accomplice carrying out orders: he brought her water and food and cleaned her excrement bucket, being fully aware that she was locked up. Despite this, he has received a lesser sentence, due to his secondary participation and an intellectual disability that limited his will.
They used his card to withdraw the money and keep it
The sentence explains that, during the time they held her, the couple, after finding out her PIN number, used the victim’s bank card to make various withdrawals at ATMs and payments in stores, appropriating a total of 2,171.52 euros from the account into which they deposited the pension.
The illegal detention ended in December 2024 when a neighbor, alerted by the victim’s cries for help and requests for food through the window, called the Police, who had to intervene together with the firefighters to break the locks and free her.
Convicted of illegal detention, against moral integrity and fraud
The Provincial Court of Salamanca sentenced the couple to a total sentence of 11 years and 6 months in prison: 7 years and 6 months for the crime of illegal detention, 1 year and 3 months for the crime against moral integrity, and 2 years and 9 months for a continued crime of fraud.
The third convicted person, as he was an accomplice and the highly qualified mitigating circumstance was applied to him due to his disability, was sentenced to 2 years and 4 months for the crime of illegal detention, and 2 months for the crime against moral integrity.
In addition, the three must jointly compensate the victim with 6,000 euros in moral damages, in the same way that the couple must jointly and severally return the 2,171.52 euros that they appropriated from the victim’s account. It should be noted that the sentence was not final and could be appealed before the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León.