A 34-year-old man was arrested after committing a series of sexual assaults in the vicinity of the Sant Cugat del Vallès railway station in Barcelona. The individual carried out the attacks in the mornings, when the victims were heading to their workplaces. He used scarves or masks to hide his face and acted in areas without security cameras to avoid being identified.
The attacker targeted several women between January 2020 and April of the following year, committing groping and various types of assaults. One of the victims managed to escape, while in other cases, he was apprehended thanks to the intervention of a woman who heard the screams for help. In total, he is charged with eight sexual assaults in that specific area.
After a complex investigation by the Mossos d'Esquadra, the man was arrested in July 2021. Although he was initially sent to provisional prison, he ultimately regained his freedom while awaiting trial in February of the following year. The subject will be tried for the attacks next Monday, facing a prosecution request of 16 years and 11 months in prison.
The victims' complaints, as well as the similarities in the assailant's modus operandi, led the Central Unit for Sexual Assaults to suspect that it was a single individual. The investigations became complicated, as the descriptions provided by the victims did not allow for the identification of the assailant, and the recordings from the station did not capture his image.
The assailant, who acted dressed in work clothes and with his face covered, committed the attacks at different times, even reoffending multiple times. His arrest occurred after being discovered using a stolen card on a porn website. He now faces a possible 40 years in prison for his crimes.
