It was the aggression he used to use. But that last time he choked her by pressing his hands on her neck, Mel felt she was losing consciousness. She and her abuser, Víctor, were no longer together. The love that had been broken by blows, with a restraining order in place. The mistake of this woman, a 25-year-old Colombian, was believing that he had changed and giving him a second (and third and fourth) chance. She let him back into her house. And there he was, being suffocated until her roommate started shouting for him to let her go. After seeing that it was serious, and hearing “you are going to die here,” she locked herself in her room to call the police. The officers arrived at the home within minutes, arresting the man who, currently, remains in prison.
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But this episode was only the culmination of a story that began in 2022, with Mel’s arrival in Spain “seeking a better life.” She soon found a job and settled in Torrejón. She met Víctor on a dating app, and there was a connection. She was 21; he was 39, with a nine-year-old daughter. But since he did not work, she agreed to move in with him assuming all the costs of rent and other expenses. “I had to pay for food, but also his vices: tobacco, beer… He worked sporadically in construction, once a month… Sometimes they called him, but he said he didn’t go because he wasn’t feeling well. And a few minutes later he was already on the couch playing PlayStation.”
He spent so much time at home, Mel says, also flirting with other women online. “On Tinder, WhatsApp, Instagram… I found out because I gave his daughter a phone, but he linked it to his Google account. One day I took the device and conversations appeared, photos of naked women… and even videos, because he liked to record himself having sex. It was an impressive catalog, and on his own little daughter’s phone,” the Colombian tells this newspaper. Those infidelities were, throughout the relationship, the main cause of their arguments.
The first fight, which took place in 2024, ended with marks on her neck after he tried to choke her and landed a couple of punches to her head. Mel left the house “trembling.” She tried to sleep, unsuccessfully, on a park bench. But at dawn she went back up to shower and go to work.
He repeated it “more than 50 times.” In one of them, he even ended up hitting her with a monitor, which was destroyed. Although she did not end up much better. Blood on her arms, scratches and bruises on her body and face… Every time something like that happened, she chose to leave. Later, he apologized saying that ‘she was the love of his life’ and they ended up reconciling. “I think he did it because I was afraid to be alone. The neighbors heard the fights and called the police, but I always ended up telling them nothing was wrong. I lied. It took me a while to open my eyes,” Mel says, always conditioned by a phrase Víctor emphasized: “If they lock me up because of you, I will kill you when I get out“.
With that threat as an anchor, it was hard for her to break ties. She went to live alone several times, but he always ended up finding her, having mutual friends and knowing where she worked. “He told me he had really changed and…”. It was not until a last outburst in which he ended up, as usual, bruised when she decided to file a complaint “terrified.” A judge issued a restraining order of 500 meters which he violated on several occasions.
“I didn’t know how to act. He showed up at my work and tried to convince me that he was no longer the same person… I didn’t call the police because I didn’t know how to act, I thought I only had to notify them if he hurt me,” Mel says, who currently lives with psychiatric treatment and immersed in a whirlwind of emotions: on one hand, she is calm since, after Víctor’s arrest, he remains in prison. But, at the same time, she knows he will be out soon. And she concludes: “Every time I get a call from the viogen service my heart skips a beat thinking that he is already out. He said he would kill me if they took him to prison… and I think he is capable of keeping his promise.”
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