A court in Buenos Aires province has sentenced former Olympic gymnast Federico Molinari to one year and eight months of conditional imprisonment for grooming a 15-year-old student at his gymnasium in Don Torcuato. The ruling, handed down by Judge Mariela Quintana of San Isidro’s Correctional Court No. 3, also imposes a restraining order, mandatory psychological treatment, and two years of supervision by the provincial release board. The case, prosecuted by the specialised unit on child sexual exploitation and human trafficking, centred on suggestive Instagram messages in which Molinari allegedly urged the teenager to activate the platform’s ephemeral mode, which automatically deletes sent texts. The victim’s legal representative, María Emilia García Márquez, stated that while the sentence was insufficient given the harm caused, the conviction validated the victim’s account and sent a message that grooming carries consequences.

In parallel, a Swedish district court in Malmö sentenced a 22-year-old man to three and a half years in prison for rape and attempted exploitation of a child for sexual posing. The offender, who has a mild intellectual disability, coerced a girl under 15 into sending nude images by threatening to disclose her purchase of cigarettes to her mother, and later raped a woman with an intellectual disability in his car after threatening to disseminate intimate material. The court found that the disabilities of both the perpetrator and the victim did not alter the legal assessment. The man admitted the child exploitation charge but denied rape, claiming the sexual encounter was consensual.

In India, the Gauhati High Court upheld the conviction of a 71-year-old gynaecologist for outraging the modesty of a minor patient, ruling that groping her breasts could not be considered a routine examination. The court reduced the sentence to a fine of 5,000 rupees, citing the doctor’s advanced age and the fact that the incident predated a 2013 amendment to the penal code. The judgment noted that the victim had consulted the doctor for menstrual irregularities, an internal condition that did not require unbuttoning her blouse, and that the doctor’s own admission of touching and pressing her breasts as part of a pregnancy test was “absurd.”

Argentine legal experts and child protection advocates have used the Molinari case to highlight a 73.7 percent rise in digital sexual crimes against minors in the country over the past year. Hernán Navarro, director of the Grooming Argentina foundation, described the offence as a form of “emotional kidnapping” and argued that current sentencing scales often fail to reflect the lasting harm inflicted. The victim’s lawyer also criticised the “worrying passivity” of sports oversight bodies, which she said did not respond adequately when informed of the allegations. In Sweden, the Malmö court’s ruling reaffirmed that intellectual disability does not diminish criminal responsibility for sexual violence, while the Indian high court’s decision reinforced the principle that medical authority cannot be invoked to justify sexual contact with a minor.

The Molinari sentence is final at the trial level, though appeals remain possible under Argentine law. The Swedish judgment may be challenged in a higher court. In India, the Gauhati High Court’s order is binding unless appealed to the Supreme Court. Across these jurisdictions, the rulings underscore a common judicial trend: courts are increasingly willing to treat digital grooming and physical abuse as serious violations, even as debates persist over whether penalties adequately match the severity of the offences.