6 years in prison for rape, in the case of the man from Bihor who has a child with his 12-year-old stepdaughter

The court forbade the man to come within 200 meters of his stepdaughter for 5 years after serving his sentence.

“Forces the defendant Varga Petru Rusalim to pay the sum of 50,000 lei, representing moral damages, to the civil party (…). It orders the seizure of the defendant’s assets until the sum of 50,000 lei is met,” the judgment of the Marghita Court states, which can be appealed within 10 days.

Proven by genetic testing

The investigation in this case began in May of last year, on the occasion of a social investigation by the mayor’s office in Spinuș. Then a 12-and-a-half-year-old girl informed the police that, at the end of March, she had sexual relations with a boy of the same age. Medical examiners confirmed she was 22 weeks pregnant, and on October 2, she gave birth to a baby boy.

In a December 2023 briefing, the prosecutors in Marghita explained that the investigations made them suspect the common-law partner of the girl’s mother as the father of the newborn. As a result, a genetic examination was requested.

“From the forensic report drawn up by the National Institute of Forensic Science – Judicial Genetic Service, it emerged that the father of the child is the defendant (Petru Rusalim Varga – editor’s note)”, it was stated in the press release of the Marghita Prosecutor’s Office.

The individual was arrested on December 16, 2023, after two days before he was detained by investigators, but without being presented within 24 hours before a rights and freedoms judge. A day before the arrest, in a statement for ebihoreanul.ro, the prosecutor of the case, Alexandru Lup, claimed that “it is not appropriate” to request preventive measures until he has proof that the girl did not consent to the sexual act with his stepfather.

The next day, however, the prosecutor asked the Marghita Court to arrest Varga, but not for rape, but for sexual intercourse with a minor.

The man claimed that the minor had agreed to sleep with him

According to the documents from the file, consulted by Jurnal Bihorean and Bihon, the man admitted to the court that “between September 2022 and December 2022, he had two or three normal, consensual sexual relations with the minor (…), knowing her age, sexual relations consumed against the background of alcohol consumption by him”.

For her part, the minor stated that she was not hit or assaulted, but she was afraid of her stepfather, who warned her “not to tell anyone about the fact that he had several sexual relations with her, this warning being sent to the minor even before she was interviewed by the police authorities”.

The judgment of the Marghita Court states that the defendant was convicted of continued rape.

In the case of Petru Rusalim Varga, the law was not applied, which states that any sexual act committed by an adult with a minor who has not reached the age of 16 will be considered rape and will be punished with imprisonment from 7 to 12 years and the prohibition of the exercise of certain rights , unless the age difference between the perpetrator and the victim does not exceed five years. This is because the rules in question were promulgated in July 2023, and the facts of which Varga is accused were committed previously, applying the principle of the more favorable criminal law.