The erotic photographer from San Sebastian José Juan
Kote
Cabezudo, 74, is the protagonist of one of the most notorious court cases in Gipuzkoa.
In a trial that began this Monday in San Sebastián, he faces a sentence of 121 and a half years in prison requested by the Prosecutor's Office for the possible commission of 32 crimes, most of them of a sexual nature.
He is accused of abusing young models, some of them minors, during photo shoots and sharing those images without his consent on pay-per-view Internet porn pages where they were seen naked.
The private prosecution represents 17 of these women and asks for a sentence of 2,388 years in prison because it adds 152 crimes of sexual abuse with penetration.
Cabezudo arrived at the Gipuzkoa High Court from the Martutene prison (San Sebastián),
The complainants report that Kote Cabezudo photographed them naked and presumably tricked them into using that material on web pages with pornographic content.
The defendant assured his models that "his private parts would never be seen [in the photographs] and that the most explicit nudes would never be published because they were works of a personal nature," according to the indictment.
In reality, many of these photos were published on paid internet sites that appeared in the name of Cabezudo and from which he would have profited.
The private prosecution filed by lawyer Mario Díez maintains that the photographer coerced the victims and took advantage of the "reverential fear that his figure and his age difference provoked."
He took advantage of this position, he adds in his writing,
The summary contains the testimony of a model who began working with Cabezudo in 2004, when she was 14 years old, and who continued to attend photo sessions until she was of legal age.
This young woman recounts that the photographer sexually abused her with penetration "on at least 150 occasions on 150 different days," according to her complaint.
The way of acting was similar in all cases.
Díez represents 17 of the 21 alleged victims (in the case of four women the alleged crimes have prescribed) and asks that Cabezudo be convicted of 152 crimes of sexual abuse with penetration.
In addition to the prison sentence, the lawyer asks that Cabezudo face compensation for a total of 1.7 million euros for the victims and be disqualified for 20 years.
The public prosecutor's office accuses Cabezudo of 32 crimes of a sexual nature, child pornography, fraud and against the moral integrity of 16 of the models for the reported events that were allegedly committed between 1992 and 2013.
Kote Cabezudo has gone this Monday in a police vehicle to the Guipuzcoan Court, in the midst of great media expectation.
In the room of the First Section, the 40 volumes (about 15,000 pages) that collect the entire judicial investigation of this case accumulated during the last nine years, since the first of the complaints were formulated in 2013, were waiting for him.
The first session of the trial has been suspended, without the defendant having declared, and will resume this Tuesday.
Cabezudo's defense has raised the admission of some photo books with which it is intended to prove the "artistic contribution" of the accused, one of his lawyers has commented, as well as a contract allegedly signed by one of the victims and that could not be contributed before because they had access to it three days before the start of the trial.
The lawyer for the private prosecution has also proposed that the partner of one of the victims testify, who in his day tried to negotiate with Cabezudo the removal of the photos of his partner from the Internet, and of the mayor of Belauntza (Gipuzkoa), who assures to witness the "harassment" that this woman could suffer, explained Díez.
This is the main case against Cabezudo, who has already been sentenced five times for as many minor matters derived from the central summary.
Some procedures have already been tried and resolved with final convictions for crimes such as obstruction of justice, disobedience or providing false documentation to the courts.
The trial he now faces will be held a few weeks before the photographer is due to serve four years in prison, the maximum allowed by law.