Her version, his version and the camera images: the judge based itself to giving a medical student (24) suspension of punishment (Leuven)
Guilty of rape and damage to sexual integrity. Facts for which the Criminal Code provides a minimum penalty of 6 months and a maximum sentence of 10 years, plus a serious fine. And yet the Leuven criminal court gave a 24-year-old student of gynecology and obstetrics suspension of punishment. She not only took his age into account, but also his blank criminal record and his personality. Moreover, she didn’t want to break his promising career. A decision that many do not understand. With this reconstruction we try to explain what the judge has based.
Leuven, November 9, 2023. A female student has agreed with a friend to go out. After they had drunk a bottle of wine in her room, they went to a dressed Halloween party in a cafe in the Tiensestraat in Leuven. She in a clown suit and strikingly painted.
In her statement to the police, two days later, she says that she ordered a beer at one point at the bar. Afterwards the light went out of her. The first thing she could remember again was that it was 9 o’clock in the morning and that she woke up naked. In the bed of the also naked student of medicine she had met a few hours earlier.
A ‘passer -by’ offered to the cafe to guide the student to her girlfriend’s room, says the convicted doctor in Spe. But he did not trust it and told the steward of the cafe that he would accompany her
When the latter told her what had happened that evening, she went to the Sexual Violence Care Center in Leuven and filed a complaint with the police. Seven months later, on June 27, 2024, the 24-year-old medical student was invited for an interrogation.
Care Center Sexual Violence
This is the story of the facts of the medical student, as it was also included in the judgment. He was out with a friend that evening. Around 5 o’clock in the morning he went home alone. He was tired and had been drunk too much. In the vicinity of the Faculty of Law, he met the student, the later victim, for the first time. She was looking for a night shop, he offered to guide her to the Muntstraat, where he knew a night shop. Because it was closed, she wanted to go back to the cafe from where she came. Because she did not know the way, the doctor in training went along. Until the door, because he wanted to go home because he had lessons the next day. Along the way she suddenly kissed him.
The cafe where the victim and her girlfriend went to. – © JH
From images of surveillance cameras that the police looked at during the investigation, it was clear that the student was « very drunk ». She had trouble keeping herself up and fell regularly. The images supported the process that the convicted doctor described in his statements.
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Because her girlfriend with whom she was going to stay home was already home, a ‘passer -by’ offered her to the cafe to guide her to her room, the convicted doctor in training continued in his statement. But he did not trust it and told the steward of the cafe that he would accompany her.
Along the way they told about their studies and about their private life, they also kissed. « At the height of the De Banier store, she said she actually liked that I would stay with her. » Because her girlfriend did not open the door and also did not answer her cell phone, she went to his room. Step half an hour. Along the way they stopped kissing twice.
Without a condom
Arriving in his room, the student says medicine in his interrogation, they started kissing again and they also started to undress each other. Just before penetration he would have asked her if it was good that he penetrated her. Without a condom. At his interrogation he no longer knew that he explicitly asked her if she took birth control, but assumed that it was. After sex they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
The next day he told her how the evening went. Then it turned out that she did not use contraception. « But she would get a morning-after pill »
The next day – she still remembered nothing – he told her how the evening went. Then it turned out that she did not use contraception. « But she would get a morning after pill. » The next day she went to the Sexual Violence Care Center and was reported to the police for rape and damage to sexual integrity.
At the first session, on March 11 this year, the doctor in the meantime did not dispute the indictment. But he thought it was not against her will after what had happened before.
In his or her assessment, a judge must follow the law. And that is clear. There is no permission when the sexual act has been committed by using the vulnerable condition of the victim as a result of, among other things, fear, influence of alcohol and narcotic agents. As far as the ultimately punishment is concerned, a judge does have room to make a decision based on all the elements that are before you.
