Siblings jailed for Mari Luz's murder

A Huelva court ruled that Santiago del Valle and his sister Rosa must go to jail for the sexual abuse and murder of a five-year-old child.

Mari Luz Cort¨¦s disappeared on January 13, 2008 and was found drowned in the marshes of Huelva 54 days later. The case caused great social unrest because Del Valle was a convicted sexual offender who should have been in jail, but was free because of a long chain of judicial mistakes.

Social pressure led politicians to blame the courts, and judges reacted by blaming the system and going on a covert strike. Santiago del Valle was sentenced to 19 years for murder and three more years for sexual abuse, while his sister Rosa received a nine-year conviction for being an accomplice to the crime.

The child's father, Juan Jos¨¦ Cort¨¦s, said that his family is feeling "blocked and in a way frustrated."

"Unfortunately, the justice system here hands down short sentences and behaves benevolently towards criminals," he said.

After his daughter's death, Cort¨¦s embarked on a drive to collect enough signatures to get the Penal Code reformed with tougher sentences for pedophiles. In May, two months after Mari Luz's body was found, Cort¨¦s met personally with Prime Minister Jos¨¦ Luis Rodr¨ªguez Zapatero, who promised to review the Penal Code. According to Cort¨¦s, this promise "was not kept."

A series of errors at Seville's courts had allowed Del Valle to evade justice for over four years, leaving him free to commit his last crime against Mari Luz Cort¨¦s. He should have gone to jail in December 2004 to serve a two-year sentence for sexually harassing a nine-year-old girl in Seville. But he was allowed to elude prison because he apparently lacked a record.

Del Valle had in fact been previously tried for abusing his own daughter in 1998. Although the sentence was due in May 2003, it was not released until December 2005. That time lag allowed the pedophile to walk free.