“We have to call that house the little house of terror because it is a drama, a horrible thing.” This is how a former employee describes Julio Iglesias’ mansion in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) in the investigation with which elDiario.es and Univision Noticias revealed this Tuesday that two former employees accuse the singer of sexual assault.
During three years of journalistic investigation and after speaking with 15 people who worked between the late 90s and 2023 in the singer’s homes in the Dominican Republic, Bahamas and Spain, the Spanish digital media and the American channel explain how these two women report having been attacked in 2021 by Julio Iglesias, who is currently 82 years old.
The events – which include episodes of harassment, assault and sexual violence, according to the story of the victims: a domestic worker and a physiotherapist – took place at the residences of Julio Iglesias in Punta Cana (Dominican Republic) and in Lyford Cay (Bahamas) with the knowledge of the women in charge of managing the home and hiring the staff.
The article, signed by nine journalists from the two media, ensures that the singer has not responded to any of the attempts to contact him or his legal representatives. The EFE Agency has also tried to obtain the version from Iglesias’s entourage without success.
Complaints before the court
The women have denounced Iglesias before the Prosecutor’s Office of the National Court, which has opened proceedings, still in a very preliminary stage and which are kept secret, to analyze it, according to tax sources informing EFE.
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These events, according to the complaint filed on January 5, accessed by elDiario.es, “refer to events that occurred in 2021 that could constitute trafficking in human beings for the purposes of imposing forced labor and servitude along with ‘several crimes against sexual freedom and indemnity such as sexual harassment and sexual assault’, as well as injuries and various crimes against workers’ rights ‘due to the imposition of abusive working conditions,’” notes the Spanish digital media.
According to Spanish legislation, Spanish courts have jurisdiction to investigate crimes that have been committed outside the national territory, provided that those criminally responsible were Spaniards or foreigners who had subsequently acquired Spanish nationality.
This rule establishes the jurisdiction of the National Court for “crimes committed outside the national territory, when in accordance with the laws or treaties their prosecution corresponds to the Spanish courts.”
The Spanish Government wants him to go “until the end”
After the complaints became known, the Spanish Government has asked that the investigation of the events be carried out “to the end” so that there is “no room for impunity”.
“We are not going to look the other way,” said the spokesperson for the Executive and Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers and after granting veracity to the information published today by the digital newspaper eldiario.es and the television network Univisión Noticias in the United States.
The Spanish Minister of Equality, Ana Redondo, for her part, stressed in
“Without questioning the presumption of innocence, in Spain the law protects victims. When there is no consent, there is aggression,” said Redondo, while the Government spokesperson pointed out that, despite not having read the information in depth, journalistic work deserves a lot of respect.
With information from EFE
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