Vicarious violence in Spain: a look at a brutal phenomenon a year after the tragedy in Tenerife

Ang “I’ll hurt you where it hurts the most” It is a heinous form of violence that last year caused the deaths of seven men in Spain and was defined for the first time as a concept in 2012 by Argentine psychologist Sonia Vaccaro.

“I call‘ vicarious violence ’the violence done to children to hurt the woman”, defines Vaccaro, a clinical and forensic psychologist based in Spain for two decades.

“It was secondary violence to the main victim, who was a woman. The woman wanted to be harmed and the damage was done by third parties, by an intermediary” Vaccaro explained on his website-. The abuser knew the assault , killing sons/daughters, is to ensure that the woman will not be healed. It’s a serious injury. “

Its concept is included here in the State Pact against Gender Violence, “signed and ratified in Spain in 2017 and already part of several court decisions in Spain and Colombia,” explains Vaccaro, author of the case study of data analysis of severe vicarious violence. in 2021.

Published by the Association of Feminist Psychology Women and sponsored by the General Directorate of Gender Violence, Equal Treatment and Diversity of the Junta de Andalucía, the study examined cases of murder of men and women for vicarious violence since 2000 in Spain.

“The sample obtained consisted of 50 homicides that occurred in the context of vicarious violence,” the report said which provides a surprising number: in 82 per cent of cases, the perpetrator of the crime is the biological father of the victims.

The case of Tenerife girls

This figure becomes empty one of the most painful cases experienced in Spain: the disappearance of younger sisters Olivia, six years old, and Anna, 1, who in April last year were kidnapped in the Canary Islands by their father, Tomás Antonio Gimeno, who has since not gave any signs of life.

It is believed that, to punish his ex -wife, Gimeno, 37, will appease his daughters.I would have thrown them into the sea then he would have committed suicide.

“You won’t see them again”, Gimeno repeatedly condemned his ex, Beatriz Zimmermann, by phone on April 27, 2021 when he picked them up, according to him, outside for dinner and he never returned them to Beatriz’s house, on the island of Tenerife.

birth

A year after seeing her daughters for the last time, Beatriz Zimmermann Elsa just gave birthhis third daughter.

Elsa was born on April 26, that same day, a year before, Beatriz was with Olivia and Anna before they were seen again.

When Gimeno took his daughters, Beatriz and Tomás had been living with them for over a year. a disputed separation that she decided while she was pregnant with Anna and after giving up on supporting Tomás ’infidelities.

Beatriz, 36, returned to form a couple with Eric Domba Belgian businessman 26 years older than him, which he met when he bought a plot of land from Tomás to build a plantation in Tenerife.

“I don’t want that old man to take care of my children,” Gimeno complained about his ex’s relationship with the Belgian.

Eric Domb is now celebrating the birth of his daughter Elsa.

For friends of the couple, the chance of a date is “Gift from Anna and Olivia to help Beatriz regain her joy in this difficult day ”.

Another case in Barcelona

Another case of vicarious violence that shook the Spaniards was the murder in Barcelona of Leo, a baby of two years and nine months, who in September last year was suffocated by his father, the Argentine Martin Ezequiel Alvarez Giaccioto destroy his wife, which he separates.

Alvarez Giaccio, a 44-year-old economist with dual Argentine-Spanish nationality, married French Aurélie, Leo’s mother, and lived in Barcelona’s Sants Badal neighborhood.

“You’ll regret it”, the Argentine threatened Aurélie when he raised the separation.

But on Tuesday, August 24, 2021, he looked for Leo, as if nothing had happened, “for a walk”. She stayed with the baby in a room at the Concordia hotel in Barcelona, ​​on Avinguda del Parallel, where Martín and Aurélie celebrated their wedding.

She was with her son at the pool. He was photographed and videotaped.. At night, a security camera recorded the bad way in which he escaped from the hotel, leaving his son’s body in the room.

Interpol issued a warrant of arrest for him to be considered the one who allegedly killed his son.

Three weeks after her baby suffocated and fled, the body of Alvarez Giaccio was found in a woods near Barcelona El Prat airport. He hanged himself.

When Aurélie buried her baby, she asked, through her lawyer, to legally remove her father’s surname from her son.

“I’ll leave you at the hotel what you deserve”This was the last message Alvarez sent to his son’s mother after he died.

Madrid. Correspondent

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