“We are devastated. You don’t know the harm you have done to us when we only love you and have provided you with the best. A terrible harm because everything is false.” Patricia Campos, known for being the first female pilot in the Spanish Armed Forces, with multiple decorations, a football coach, and now a sports commentator for media outlets such as RNE, À Punt, and the AS newspaper, her voice breaks and she cannot hold back tears in her brief conversation with this newspaper. She was arrested on Thursday along with her wife after a complaint filed by their two children, aged 12 and 15, whom she adopted in Uganda in 2019, after learning about the situation in the country where she carries out solidarity activities through her NGO Goals for Freedom.
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The detailed account given by the minors, who are under the guardianship of the Generalitat in a reception center, to the Guardia Civil and the Massamagrell court is completely denied by Campos and her circle. Both she and her wife have been accused by their children of an alleged continuous crime of ill-treatment within the family and have been prohibited from approaching the minors within 500 meters.
This ill-treatment, according to the children’s account, who have lived with them in a town north of Valencia since 2021, includes beatings with a belt, which they accuse Campos’s wife of, food restrictions, continuous punishments, and threats, including being returned to their country of origin.
In a statement, Patricia Campos acknowledged violent behavior from her children, though without going into detail. “Unfortunately, over the years of living together at home, numerous episodes have occurred in which we, the two accused, have actually been the victims. Some facts have been on record with the Justice system for some time, and others, out of self-shame, have been silenced, but all of them will demonstrate the innocence that we categorically proclaim today,” she asserts.
The couple’s inner circle elaborates further and tells this newspaper that the mothers have filed several complaints against the minors for continuous money theft, punctures in car tires, and even attempts to steal the vehicle itself. In the case of money, not only from them but also from people who were part of the family’s circle. “Their punishments were to forbid them from going to the library or watching TV. And taking them to a psychologist to see if these behaviors could be changed,” they say.
Regarding food, they assure that they have the receipts for the supermarket bills where they did their shopping, which was intended for the minors and Campos, because her wife is vegetarian. There are testimonies, which they assure will appear, that confirm there were no restrictions. This contrasts with the minors’ account, who told their classmates that they were not given food.
“As I already stated in my judicial declaration,” the former military woman points out, “I vehemently deny having exercised any type of physical or psychological abuse towards my children. They accuse us of facts that are absolutely and radically false, as well as totally contrary to the reality of the family environment that we have provided them since their arrival in 2021,” assures Campos, who continues to believe “firmly” in “responsible adoption, emotional care, maternal love, and protection,” “despite the difficulties that, as mothers, we have unfairly suffered throughout this time.”
“We have always made an infinite effort to resolve each of the problems we have faced as mothers, always through conciliation and the permanent search for constructive solutions with expert therapists that would not be traumatic for our children,” she adds before reaffirming that her family model “is absolutely contrary to this type of practice that we have never used in the family context with our children,” she assures.
“We feel deep disappointment and sadness for what has happened. It is painful to see how years of dedication to human rights activism and solidarity projects — which were precisely what led us to meet and adopt my children in Uganda — are tarnished by a narrative that does not conform to the reality of our home,” she concludes.
