Maribel divorced her partner, local police sub-inspector Víctor G. B., in 2022. When she said enough, a hellish period began for her and her two daughters, as detailed in the sentence that sent the officer to prison in July. In the three years between the first complaint in July 2023 and his entry into prison in Granada, the abuser used a whole technological deployment taking advantage of his police knowledge to monitor and harass her and repeatedly broke the restraining order imposed by the judge. “I told him to pack his things and leave my house… Then the greatest ordeal of my life began,” says Maribel, who is a psychologist and is 53 years old. The path to safety has not been easy. She has gathered the courage to tell EL PAÍS after her ex-husband began serving a 29-month sentence for habitual violence and psychological harm.
The couple married in 1992. Maribel explains that the relationship between them “was always complicated, although it was not always bad.” The story began to turn sour, she recounts, with the birth of the second daughter. Among other reasons, because she decided to adapt her life to Víctor’s, who started working as a local police officer in Motril, Granada. She looked for a job in a nursing home in the coastal city so he would not feel threatened. Almost 20 years passed until she decided she wanted to work in the capital and improve her training. Then, the man “started to spiral,” she recounts. Maribel read her doctoral thesis in 2017 and earned an outstanding Cum Laude. “You got your way,” he said instead of congratulating her. From then on, according to the sentence, “the behaviors of control, jealousy, and contempt towards her person worsened.”
At that time, Maribel already felt she had to distance him from her life and began to come to terms with it. She even prepared the regulatory agreement for the divorce, but he insisted he was going to get treatment, that he was going to change. She agreed not to formalize the divorce but set one condition: “We had to do a division of assets. I was not willing to lose what was mine. And he agreed.” She secured her assets. Now she regrets not having expedited the divorce. According to the sentence, “during cohabitation, the accused showed aggressive behaviors — hitting furniture, throwing objects — and maintained a contemptuous and hostile attitude also towards their daughters.”
She places the point of no return in 2022, when she told him to leave her house. Víctor left in September and the ordeal Maribel refers to began. As a psychologist, she analyzes that psychopathic traits began to emerge in him that had remained dormant until he felt abandoned.
What she experienced those months, a prelude to what happened in the following years, seems like a horror movie. Maribel recounts that he kept entering her home despite her changing the lock again and again. To always keep it in her mind, Maribel believes, he stole objects or moved them around. The woman installed surveillance cameras that he disabled by cutting the power. When Maribel realized the cameras were not working, she quickly went home. But he had put a tracker on the car that allowed him to always know where she was. Maribel mentions several trips in which the abuser, who is also the abuser of her daughters — now adults — followed her without reason.
The sentence — whose appeal before the Provincial Court finally led the policeman to prison — finds proven that “the eldest daughter, since childhood, has witnessed episodes of verbal and psychological violence exercised by her father towards her mother, and has been the target of numerous shouts and insults such as useless, slut, you will get nowhere.” The younger one narrated before the judge a situation during a weekend she spent with her father: he left her in what she called the cave (referring to her father’s house), “without food, phone, cold, and isolated from her friends.”
Maribel recalls with great bitterness the impact all this has had on her eldest daughter: “She lost a very beautiful time, the university years. She lived that time locked in a home, also with cameras, and I will never forget that. Her friends have been exceptional, but she did not live that stage as she should have,” she laments.
A “disappointing” system
The woman lists dozens of breaches of the restraining order, the times he followed her, or the day he sent a man dressed like him to intimidate her. A list too long of episodes included in the seven legal cases that Víctor G. B. still has pending with Maribel, plus three others unrelated to her concerning professional matters related to an alleged criminal organization under investigation in the Granada Local Police. The latest investigations related to that case, independent of the abuse case, point to him as a key actor.
“He tried to make me afraid and to make me look crazy to others. For him, it was like a chess game where he moved pieces and I had to guess. If I won the move, then he got poisoned and took revenge.” Despite the wear, she tried to stay focused. She relied on her profession, received treatment from her colleagues. She tried to anticipate and guess how he was going to act.
As a professional, Maribel is familiar with gender violence and has worked with victims. “My profession protected me from him ending me,” she explains, “but judicially it has harmed me a lot.” She says she feels disappointed. “I have many years as a forensic expert, my work has always been respected and highly valued. I expected support because, in a way, it was my environment. What I did not expect was the opposite.” And she adds: “I saw that what bothered the court was that I reported because it was more work.”
Maribel thanks the work of the Civil Guard, National Police, or the Government sub-delegation in the province and criticizes some judicial bodies or the role of the Granada City Council, where her ex-husband works. She accuses them of having promoted him and paying him a bonus for being in charge of their daughters, something she says did not actually happen. Asked about this matter, a City Council spokesperson declines to respond.
Maribel also asks that victims of gender violence not be spoken of as if they were all the same and belonged to a single social class: “There is no victim profile. I have had judges and notaries in my practice.” She recommends other survivors try to keep a clear head. “There are moments when the victim has such a level of suffering that she says: ‘I don’t care, I want to separate and that’s it.’ But then you realize you have lost assets. Over time, you start to feel better and regret that,” she explains.
Stress and danger are still very present in Maribel’s life. She still does not feel calm. “We have to face everything we have lived through.” She smiles as she says her two daughters are on the right path; one has finished university, and the other is just starting. They have their whole lives ahead to enjoy without fear.
The phone number 016 serves victims of gender violence, their families, and their environment 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not recorded on the phone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. Contact can also be made via email at 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and by WhatsApp at 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation phone at 900 20 20 10. In an emergency, call 112 or the National Police (091) and Civil Guard (062) numbers. If calling is not possible, the ALERTCOPS app can be used to send an alert signal to the police with geolocation.
Read more José Palma, from the TPS National Alliance: “For many Salvadorans, losing it is a death sentence”
