A contestant on the Spanish version of the reality show Big Brother has been sentenced to fifteen months in prison for sexually harassing another contestant in 2017, the Spanish judiciary said in a press release on Monday.
The Madrid court that judged this case also banned him from approaching or contacting the victim for four years and also ordered him to pay 6,000 euros for “moral damage”.
According to the press release, the show’s producers will have to pay the same amount to the victim. The public prosecutor had asked for two and a half years in prison.
The scene took place during the filming of “Gran Hermano” (Big Brother in Spanish) in 2017, a show broadcast by Telecinco, the most watched channel in Spain.
This show consists of locking a group of people in a house and constantly filming them, with viewers having to eliminate contestants one by one.
According to the judge hearing the case, the convict, who had started a romantic relationship with the victim during the broadcast, “removed his pants while they were lying in the same bed before beginning to perform movements of a sexual nature.
However, the victim was “under the influence of alcohol” and told him “I can’t” in a weak voice,” the judiciary press release said.
“The convict’s lustful movements continued for several minutes until the victim (…) revealed that she was completely lethargic, which prompted the intervention of one of the program’s members,” Justice continued.
The affair broke out two years after filming in 2019, when the press revealed that the young woman had been asked to comment on the scene on camera in the so-called “confession room” the next day.
A video of that interrogation, which was then released by online media, showed her tearfully asking for the images to stop being broadcast. The contestant had been banned from the show.