The Court of Murcia has considered that the content of that letter constitutes a hate crime and has imposed a sentence of 16 months in prison on Ferrín Calamita, a fine of 900 euros and 5 years of special disqualification for any educational profession.

Ferrín Calamita must also compensate each of the mothers of C with 3,000 euros. due to the moral damages suffered by both.

[The Supreme Court denies the reinstatement of the judge who delayed an adoption by a lesbian couple]

Fernando Ferrín was sentenced in 2009 by the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court to 10 years of special disqualification from the position of judge for a crime of intentional prevarication because, as a family judge in Murcia, he tried to delay the adoption of C. by the sentimental partner of the biological mother.

The high court toughened the sentence initially imposed by the Superior Court of Justice of Murcia, which had appreciated a lighter crime – malicious delay in the administration of Justice – and had sentenced him to two years and three months of disqualification as a judge.

The Supreme Court considered that the decisions adopted by the judge were not “unfair delayed resolutions” but also a “display of active belligerent obstruction” to prevent the application of the law, trying to question the suitability for adoption due to the sexual orientation of the applicant woman.

In April 2018, once the disqualification sentence had been served, Ferrín Calamita asked to rejoin the Judiciary and the General Council of the Judiciary denied it.. The Supreme Court confirmed the decision of the CGPJ based on the “seriousness of the crime” of prevarication.

Ferrín Calamita was thus left out of the judicial career. On July 18, 2020, he wrote on Facebook an Open Letter to C. which has now cost him another conviction, this time for a hate crime.

letter to c

“If I remember correctly, you were born in February 2006, so now you will be 14 years old,” Calamita wrote.

“We don't know each other personally. I was the family judge in Murcia who processed the adoption request submitted in May 2006 by Vanesa, based on the fact that she was the spouse of your mother, Susana, as if that fact alone granted her an absolute right to adoption, which does not exist and yours does to the harmonious development of your personality”.

“It has come to my attention recently that you have been divorced and abandoned and turned over to social services. Very sorry. Time has come to prove me right, unfortunately. I have taken steps to find out your whereabouts, but logically they have not provided me with any information in that body of the CARM [Autonomous Community of the Region of Murcia] Council that is now called Families and LGTBI “.

“The fact is that you are already more than 12 years old. That you know that you have the right to be heard by a judge and that, when you turn 16, you can request the emancipation or authorization of age and take legal action immediately afterwards against the State and/or the CARM and against your two 'moms'”.

“At your disposal for what can help you, both personally and legally. Your dignity and basic rights as a person, subject of rights have been undermined. A grave injustice,” the letter concluded.

request for apology

On June 8, 2021, after the complaint filed against him by the Prosecutor's Office, Ferrín Calamita wrote on Facebook again to “acknowledge an error and sincerely apologize for it.”

He stated that, “in response to sources without verified reliability”, “I made the mistake of making certain comments, affirming personal facts of Vanesa and Susana – C.'s mothers – that may not conform to reality and that, if so, could have caused a unfair damage to the two people mentioned, who, like all of them, deserve intrinsic respect for their human dignity”.

The former judge offered his apologies and “humbly demanded his forgiveness”. “Only to say that the motive has not been hatred, resentment, ill will or intention to harm or defame,” he assured.

hate crime

But the Second Section of the Court of Murcia has seen it differently. In a sentence against which it is possible to appeal before the TSJ of Murcia, the magistrates affirm that the former judge had the intention of “injuring the dignity of people through actions that entail humiliation due to their sexual orientation or identity.”

For the Hearing, the Open Letter to C. “contains expressions that are intended to offend all persons belonging to the homosexual community, insofar as it questions the correct development of the minor for the sole fact of having lived together and been educated by two parents of the same sex.”

The sentence points out that, although freedom of expression protects ideas that “contrary, shock or disturb the State or any part of the population”, “there is unprotected hate speech, which goes beyond the protection granted by the legitimate exercise” of the fundamental right.

The Chamber includes in this hate speech the use of quotation marks in “two moms”, an orthographic sign that, according to the magistrates, Ferrín uses to “cast doubt on the possibility that someone can have two parents of the same sex”.

For the Chamber, “there is no doubt that he intended to belittle and humiliate two women for belonging to a certain group.”

“With clear contempt for the truth,” he says, “he accuses these two people of having abandoned a daughter”. And it adds that “the letter is not addressed to an anonymous girl who could have been raised by two people of the same sex, but, precisely, to the minor for whose delay in the processing of the adoption file the now defendant was convicted.”

The damage “has been able to affect the girl. But, undoubtedly, the contained expressions (questioning the ability to raise a girl, using clearly insulting expressions such as those related to having abandoned a daughter) are directed towards mothers, and not for any reason, but because of their condition of homosexuals and the supposed inability of these, simply for that reason ('time has come to prove me right'), to perform this function well”.

The ruling states that Ferrín “has the full right, and not just any right, but a fundamental right to think that people of the same sex should not have the right to marry or have children, even though those ideas may seem archaic to a sector of the population in a country like ours, a pioneer in the recognition of the rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual people”.

“But you cannot make statements knowing that, given the false content of the published information, the means or manner in which said information is published, as well as the very social resonance of your case and your previous judicial action, it will cause hateful actions by some of his followers on the social network and, given its dissemination, will humiliate and belittle those affected, as it happened,” he concludes.