Policewoman loses job for sending out the details of a convicted British paedophile in Spain

A POLICEWOMAN in Spain has been sentenced, fined and dismissed after 18 years of service after disclosing the details of a British man with a criminal record for paedophilia.
A court in Pamplona, Spain sentenced Teresa, a local police officer from the city in northern Spain and ordered that she pay a €4,200 fine for the disclosure of secrets by a public official.
Teresa’s sentencing means she is forbidden to hold a public job, forcing her to step down from her position in the local police.
Teresa sent her husband a photograph via the messaging application WhatsApp, the photo contained information from an internal report.
Reports suggest the internal report was regarding an incident outside a local school, the school Teresa’s daughter attended.
The incident had occurred two weeks prior and allegedly involved the attempted abduction of a 10-year-old boy outside of the school.
The report identified one suspect, a Briton with a criminal record for paedophilia known to have recently relocated to the area.
The court in Pamplona declared Teresa had sent the personal information, which included the man’s name, nationality and home address as well as the registration number, of the British man to her husband.
Teresa’s husband is an officer of the National Police forwarded the information to a colleague who also had family members in attendance at the school featured in the report.
The photo of the report continued to circulate around several members of different police forces in Pamplona before an edited version arrived in a Whatsapp group for mothers of children attending the school.
The photo caused an uproar in the community prompting officials to get involved.
Teresa argued in court that she had only sent the confidential information to her husband, a member of the police.
The court ruled that all officers that forwarded the information onwards had breached the privacy and presumption of innocence of the suspected man.
However, Teresa remains the only person sentenced as it was she that gathered the report from police, and therefore confidential, report.
Teresa’s defence lawyer, Antonio Saurez Valdes argued that she had done “something that any parent would do.”

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