A father was sentenced to prison for abusing, raping and showing pornography to his three children when they were minors.
On Thursday the Tribunal Penal de Heredia (Heredia Criminal Court) sentenced Carlos Luis Montero Víquez to 372 years in prison. However, he will only serve 50 years, the maximum prison time allowed by Costa Rican legislation.
According to information released by the Ministerio Publico (Prosecutor’s Office), the crimes began in 2002, when the oldest daughter was only 9 years old. From that year until 2013, Montero was found guilty of raping his daughter 15 times, sexually abusing her 12 times and showing her pornography seven times.
In 2004, he abused six times and showed pornographic content eight times to another daughter when she was just five years old.
In 2011, he committed three other crimes of dissemination of pornography to the detriment of his third child, who, at that time, was 15 years old.
Montero will be in preventive detention for the next six months during the sentence appeal period.
According to the premise presented by Prosecutor’s Office, the sexual attack and abuse occurred in the family home, located in Barva de Heredia, when the mother of the victims went to work or at night when she was asleep.
In addition, Montero made use of the overcrowding in the house, a situation that forced the five year old minor to sleep in the bed next to him.
“This allowed Montero to take advantage of that closeness to sexually abuse the child,” the prosecutor said.
The situation ceased when the victim’s mother realized what had happened and denounced her partner to the authorities.
The victims today are 19, 22 and 25.
The Criminal Code (Codigo Penal in Spanish) establishes between 12 and 18 years in prison for rape and between 4 and 10 years for sexual abuse. The dissemination of pornography to minors is sanctioned with one to fours years imprisonment.
Source (in Spanish): La Nacion
