Francis Montesino has been released after being arrested this Monday accused of abusing a minor under 15 years of age, while he and five other accomplices are in custody accused of extortion. After having relationships in 2022 that were recorded by the young man on video, he and four accomplices tried to extort money from the couturier who reported the threats. The viewing of the images has been decisive for the Civil Guard to have made all the arrests.
It was in October 2022 when the designer met one night with the extortionists who had entered his home. After handcuffing him and showing him the video in which he had relations two years earlier with a young man of North African origin, who according to them was 15 years old, they warned him that next time, either he would pay 500,000 euros, or it would be very different.
Read also– Francis Montesinos, attacked and in the hospital after an assault on his home: “They would be extorting him with private videos”
The prestigious couturier denounced that they were extorting him and asking for large amounts of money, warning him that if he did not pay, a video would be made public three times. Montesinos claimed to be convinced and sure that the young man was of legal age when the intimate relations took place.
Given the designer’s complaints, the investigators located and viewed the video, which provided them with clues to locate the blackmailers. Both the allegedly abused young man and five other people were arrested, but like Francis Montesinos, whose statement has been taken, they have all been released pending the measures imposed by the head judge of court number 5. from the Valencian city of Llídia.
As reported in The AR Program, the court has not yet received the expansion of the proceedings and statements compiled with the arrests to attach them to the case. The resolution, therefore, will not be quick, because the court will also have to decide whether to decide on the facts jointly, or whether to separate the cause of extortion from that of the alleged abuse of minors, in which Montesinos is involved. implicated, since it does not seem very logical that he is accused and accuser in the same judicial process.
According to the program, the researchers who have seen the images of the alleged abuse affirm that “violence is not appreciated” in it, and if it is considered sexual assault, it is because it is as soon as a minor is involved. The penalties of article 183 for child abuse are from two to six years. However, the designer would have been incited to commit a crime to extort him later, it may be a mitigation, although the crime would be considered committed, because it is a minor under 16 years of age.
The couturier had already been investigated and also arrested for a similar crime in 2014. On that occasion the father of a minor under 13 years of age, a friend of Francis Montesinos and his assistant, had let his son spend a couple of nights as a guest in the designer’s house. After this stay, the boy’s father denounced the abuses and the Civil Guard arrested Montesinos and his collaborator accused of crimes of sexual abuse, corruption of minors, child pornography and against public health.
The Llídia judge finally closed the case against the couturier but maintained the accusation against the friend and assistant. At the trial Francis testified and later assured the press that he “had nothing to do with that story.”