This text belongs to ‘Dossier Negro’, a newsletter inspired by the podcast of the same name, which Enrique Figueredo will send biweekly on Wednesdays. If you want to receive it, sign up here.
Any crime that takes a human life is abhorrent, but if the victim is a child it becomes even more abominable. Writing about murders of minors is for crime reporters a subject as delicate as it is unfortunately recurring. The special vulnerability of children makes them easy and appetizing prey in the eyes of sexual predators who often end up killing their victims because, having satiated their low drives, they want to get rid of the body of the crime. This was the performance of Francisco Javier Almeida, also known as Lardero’s monster, which we have dealt with in the latest installment of La Vanguardia’s Dossier Negro podcast. It is common, as you will see in this bulletin, for pedophiles of this profile to end up justifying their attacks with daydreams and alleged altered visions of reality, all with the aim of evading justice.
The case of the criminal Santiago del Valle had its peculiarities. Although he initially admitted to having been in contact with his victim, later, during the trial, he denied it. Del Valle murdered the under-five-year-old Mari Luz Cortés in Huelva, whom he sexually abused before ending her life. With the help of a sister, the murderer disposed of the body in a marsh area after storing it in a shopping cart. When he committed the crime, he should have been serving a pending sentence for other child abuse.
The horror. Lardero’s monster said that when the boy Alex entered his house, he was assailed by a series of fantasies that clouded him. In the case of little Laia, 13, from Vilanova i la Geltrú, the murderer tried to explain what happened, blaming her action on the panic attack that she said she had suffered when she believed that a thief had entered the house. her. That story did not have the acceptance of the jury. He was sentenced to reviewable permanent prison.
Killer parents. Although theoretically the mere possibility that parents kill their offspring generates enormous rejection, reality shows us that there is so-called vicarious violence that is often behind horrible crimes. The case of the girls Olivia and Anna, murdered in Tenerife by their father, Tomás Gimeno, was an atrocious act of revenge against the woman with whom he had had the girls. He blamed her for breaking up the marriage. This double crime is one of the most shocking I have had to report in my career.
A scourge in the church. For a couple of decades now, the cases of abuse of minors committed within the Catholic Church or in entities dependent on it have been increasingly well known. It is not about murders, but about attacks that have caused a deep evil. In Spain, one of the best known issues has been that of the Marists. In the understanding of many specialists, the Spanish ecclesiastical hierarchy has arrived too late in the fight against this serious scourge.
Marked for life. Minors who are victims of sexual abuse develop various types of trauma that can accompany them throughout their lives. The suffering of the assaulted is palpable and evident, but it is also secondarily that of the parents and relatives who, on many occasions, need tools to be able to digest and direct the post-traumatic scenario.
