Former first lady Fabiola Yáñez confirms gender violence allegations in interview

Former first lady Fabiola Yáñez said she fears for her safety and said she is the victim of harassment by former president Alberto Fernández.

Yáñez, 43, denounced her ex-partner and former head of state for gender violence earlier this week. She confirmed the development in an interview published Saturday by the Infobae news portal.

"I have to protect myself, I'm afraid," Yáñez said.

The federal judge in charge of the case, Julian Ercolini, has ordered that the former first lady's custody in Madrid, where she lives with her two-year-old son, the fruit of her decade-long relationship with the former president, be strengthened.

"He threatened me every other day for two months that if I did this, if I did that, he was going to kill himself," said Yáñez, referring to the former president.

This is the first interview the 43-year-old actress, journalist and presenter has given since she filed a complaint against Fernández for gender violence. Photographs, supposedly dating back to August 2021, emerged this week showing her with bruises and bruises on her arm and face.

"Today I couldn't leave my house, they put inhibitors so that I couldn't leave my house. Inhibitors that made the car turn off," she said, and asked the courts to investigate. 

"The justice system should investigate because I don't know why it happened," said Yáñez.

The former first lady spoke about her life in Madrid, fears for her safety and the impact of the emergence of the images on her life.

"I have taken care of this man for so many things. Those videos that appeared the other day are nothing compared to what he did," Yáñez said, referring to another leaked video in which the voice of Fernández, whose image is not seen, can be heard joking with a female media personality nearly half his age.

Yáñez also claimed that she had suffered "telephone harassment and psychological terrorism" from the former president and that she did not receive help from ex-government officials despite the fact that "many people" knew about the alleged violence between the couple while they were living together in the Olivos presidential residence on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.

Fernández, 65, denies all the accusations against him. 

"The truth of the facts is different," he said in a post on social media last week.

The courts raided Fernández's home in Buenos Aires on Friday and confiscated his mobile phone, as well as imposing restrictions such as a ban on his leaving the country, according to judicial sources quoted by the local press.

The case has shaken the entire political spectrum, especially the opposition Peronism force, which is in complete disarray.

Fernández's former president and vice-president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, said on the X  social network that her partner in government "was not a good president.”

She also considered that the images that were revealed about the case "reveal the most sordid and darkest aspects of the human condition.”

– TIMES/AFP