TWO female cleaners at a Benidorm clinic have been given six-month prison terms for harassing and mocking a colleague with short stature.
They continually referred to her as ‘the dwarf’.
An Alicante court convicted them of a hate crime and ordered them to pay the victim €6,000 in compensation.
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The two guilty women were also given a distancing order from the victim- lasting for three and a half years.
The prison sentences are suspended as it was a first offence and under two years.
A third defendant was acquitted.
The hate crimes occurred between December 2020 and July 2022
The court said the two defendants mocked the injured party by directing vexatious expressions or promoting acts that denigrated her because of her height.
For example, they phoned her with an undisclosed number to tell her that she had been hired as a trapeze artist for a dwarf circus.
The duo also persuade a friend to make a prank call in a threatening manner.
It warned her that her manager would be called because she had been spotted shopping during working hours and various comments were made that the victim and her partner were ‘hybrids’.
The unacceptable behaviour regularly took place at work with the convicted women regularly carrying out acts of humiliation and making comments in a mocking tone related to her height.
The victim filed a complaint to the Policia Nacional with the duo arguing their behaviour was purely jocular and expressed regret that they had hurt her.
The Alicante ruling can be appealed before the Valencian Supreme Court.
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