
XXIII
Sister, I Believe You
Contributed by Paola Prieto López, 2018
Keywords: Protest, Rape case, Spain
Five men were accused of raping an 18-year-old girl in Pamplona’s San Fermín bull-running festival in 2016. The case went viral after the Whatsapp messages of the group were shared on social media platforms. The judge of the case decided to accept as evidence a report from a private detective in which the girl’s social media posts where shared, intended to show that she was enjoying her holidays as evidence of her ‘not being traumatized’. The Whatsapp conversations, on the other hand, were considered ‘irrelevant’ for the case. Feminist groups all over Spain started the campaign, ‘Sister, I believe you’ to support the victim and criticize the judge’s handling of the case, which reflect how gender violence and sexual harassment victims are being treated in court and the media.