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 that includes the sentence that took the agent to prison in July. In the three years that have passed between the first complaint, in July 2023, and her entry into prison in Granada, the abuser used an entire technological array, taking advantage of his police knowledge to monitor and harass her and repeatedly broke the restraining order that the judge imposed on her. “I told him to pick up his things and leave my house… Then the biggest ordeal of my life began,” says Maribel, who is a psychologist and is 53 years old. The road to safety has not been easy. She has gathered the courage to tell EL PAÍS after her ex-husband began serving his 29-month sentence for crimes of habitual violence and mental impairment.
The couple married in 1992. Maribel explains that the relationship between the two “was always complicated, although it was not always bad.” The story began to go wrong, he says, with the birth of the second daughter. Among other reasons, because she decided to adapt her life to that of Víctor, who began working as a local police officer in Motril, Granada. She looked for a job at a nursing home in the coastal city so he wouldn't feel threatened. Almost 20 years passed until she decided that she wanted to work in the capital and improve her training. Then, the man “started shooting,” he says. Maribel read her doctoral thesis in 2017 and achieved an outstanding Cum Laude. “You got your way,” he told her instead of congratulating her. From there, according to the sentence, “the behavior of control, jealousy and contempt towards him worsened.”
At that time, Maribel already felt that she should keep him out of her life and she began to get used to the idea. He even prepared the regulatory agreement for the divorce, but he insisted that he was going to undergo treatment, that he was going to change. She agreed not to formalize the divorce, but set a condition: "We had to liquidate the property. I was not willing to lose what was mine. And she agreed." He saved his assets. Now he regrets not having expedited the divorce. According to the sentence, “during their cohabitation, the accused showed aggressive behavior—hitting furniture, throwing objects—and also maintained a contemptuous and hostile attitude toward his 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 that Maribel describes began. As a psychologist, she analyzes that psychopathic traits began to emerge in him that remained dormant until he felt abandoned.
What he experienced in those months, a prelude to what happened in the following years, seems like a horror movie. Maribel relates that he did not stop entering her home even though she changed the lock time after time. So that she would always have him in mind, Maribel believes, he would steal objects from her or change their location. The woman installed surveillance cameras that he disabled by turning off the power. When Maribel realized that the cameras were not working, she quickly went home. But he had put a locator in his car that allowed him to always know where he was. Maribel mentions several trips in which the abuser, who is also the abuser of her daughters—now of legal age—followed her for no reason.
The sentence – whose appeal before the Provincial Court has finally led the police officer to prison – recognizes proven that “the eldest daughter, since her childhood, has witnessed episodes of verbal and psychological violence exercised by her father towards her mother, and has been the object of numerous shouts and insults such as useless, slut, you are not going to amount to anything.” The little girl told the judge about a situation during a weekend she spent with her father: he left her in what she called the cave (in reference to her father's house), "without food, telephone, being cold and isolated from her friends."
Maribel remembers with great bitterness the repercussion that everything she experienced has had on her eldest daughter: "She has lost a very beautiful time, her time at university. She lived that time locked up in a home, also with cameras, and I will not forget that. Her friends have been exceptional, but she has not lived that stage as she should," 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 scare her. An excessively long list of episodes included in the seven legal cases that Víctor G. B. still has pending with Maribel, plus three others unrelated to her regarding professional matters related to an alleged criminal organization that is being investigated by the Granada Local Police. The latest investigations related to that case, independent of the abuse case, point to him as a relevant actor.
"He tried to make me afraid and make me look crazy to others. For him it was like a game of chess in which he moved a piece and I had to guess. If I won the move, then he would poison himself and take revenge." Despite the wear and tear, she tried to stay focused. He supported his profession, received treatment from his colleagues. He was trying 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 has protected me from him ending me,” he explains, “but judicially it has harmed me a lot.” She says she feels disappointed. "I have been a coroner for many years, 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 he adds: “I saw that what bothered the court was that I filed a complaint because it was more work.”
Maribel appreciates the work of the Civil Guard, the National Police or the Government subdelegation in the province and criticizes that of some judicial bodies or the role of the Granada City Council, for which her ex-husband works. He accuses them of having promoted him and paying him a bonus to be in charge of his daughters, something he claims did not actually happen. Asked about this matter, a spokesperson for the City Council declined to respond.
Maribel also asks that victims of sexist violence not be talked about 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 the consultation." She recommends other survivors try to keep a cool head. "There are moments in which the victim has such a level of suffering that they say: 'I don't care, I want to separate and that's it.' But then you realize that you have lost assets. Over time, you become well and you regret that," he explains.
Stress and danger are still very present in Maribel's life. She still doesn't feel calm. “We have to assume everything we have experienced.” She smiles when she says that her two daughters are on the right track; one has finished university, and the other is starting now. They have their whole lives ahead of them to enjoy without fear.
