The Supreme Court has just imposed a reviewable permanent prison on the woman and her boyfriend for abusing for months and killing her son, a two-year-old boy, with a beating
They met on the internet playing playstation. Cristina Jiménez was 27 years old and had a two-year-old baby, Aaron Gálvez, from a previous relationship. After several games of video games and long conversations, the woman broke with everything and moved, taking the child, from Madrid to Elche (Alicante) to move in with José Antonio Pérez. The couple thus began a new life in which, according to the researchers, only two could fit. On September 13, 2018, five months after they started living together, they both beat little Aaron to death. after the baby wet the bed.
According to the judgment of the Court of Alicante, “José Antonio, knowing the high probability that the death of the minor could occur and accepting it, exerted physical force on the minor, beating him, with blows everywhere (slapping, punching, even stamping it against some surface, etc.), which impacted different parts of his body, causing various injuries (bruises, erythemas, fractures, etc.) for which never received medical care. Then he “pressed the neck with such intensity that it prevented the child from breathing until the minor fainted, losing consciousness.
reduction in sentence
The Supreme Court has just confirmed the sentence to reviewable permanent prison that the provincial court imposed on the man. The Superior Court of Justice had reduced the sentence to 20 years in jail, but the High Court reimposed the maximum sentence. Also to Aaron’s mother, who not only witnessed the murder of her baby, but also “was aware of what your partner was doing and he consenteddoing nothing to protect the minor and prevent it”, according to the sentence that condemns her for a crime of habitual abuse and another of murder (commission by omission).
“I went to wake up the boy, he peed. I told him that it was not done and I went to get the milk. When I came back, he had peed again. So I hit him in the ass and then I lost my mind and hit him in the head. He made a gesture as if to stop breathing”. It is José Antonio’s statement about what happened on the day of the crime. The mother of the child and her boyfriend were detained at the Vinalopó hospital, where they themselves, with the help of a neighbor , had transferred that morning the child “unconscious and with multiple bruises on body and face“and where the kid died hours later, according to the summary of the case.
some hooded
The doctors quickly realized that they were dealing with a very serious case of continued ill-treatment. While trying to save the baby’s life, Cristina and her partner made it difficult for her, hiding the truth, and offered up to three different versions to explain what happened, according to the investigation: first they said that Aaron had fallen in the bathtub. Then, that some hooded men had kidnapped them. Finally, the stepfather claimed that other children had hit the kid. Their stories did not convince the toilets, who alerted the police.
The little boy died shortly after as a result of the “strangulation” to which he had been subjected, according to the summary of the case. The police investigation revealed the ordeal that the child lived during the last months of her life in that apartment in Elche in charge of her mother and her boyfriend, who attacked “brutal beatings of the minor, repeatedly and constantly”as detailed by the prosecutor during the trial, in September 2020.
cries of pain
The neighbors explained to the popular jury how the weeks before the crime they listened to the “cries of pain” of the boy through the stairs and the walls, but they did not alert the police because they were not sure what was happening in that house. Although they had complained that Aaron’s mother and her boyfriend, who were unemployed and living on an inheritance that the woman had recently received, spent a lot of time “smoking joints on the balcony”.
Those months in which little Aaron was neglected and mistreated, his father, Félix Gálvez, strove to look for his son and get his ex-partner to let him know that the child was fine, but Cristina “didn’t pick up the phone” and ” no one in the family or any friend wanted to tell me where my child was”. To make matters worse, a judge had imposed a restraining order on him after Cristina denounced him for bad treatments after a fight, a crime of which Felix was finally acquitted. “I went crazy with anguish and, breaking the restraining order, I was calling her at least from thirty different mobiles. She just wanted a picture of the child, anything to know my son was okay, but she never responded,” she recalls.
Without his father, Aaron was at the mercy of his mother and stepfather. They were 150 days subjected to “an ordeal”. Only after he died did Cristina’s boyfriend end up admitting that he had brutally beaten the boy on the day of the crime: “I gave him three or four blows to the head. Right after the mother entered the room “. She also admitted to having abused the child on other occasions: “It is the first time that she hit the child like that, the other times were of lesser intensity “.
Educate “slapping”
Before the judge, the man tried to justify himself: “Cristina says that she does not know how to educate the childdelegate to me and my way of educating is by slapping.” And he clarified: “I do not slap him daily, only when I see that he has done something wrong.” The man specified in his statement what behaviors the child deserved, in his opinion , a physical punishment: “if he complained, made a bad gesture or he peed on the floorI would slap him on the ass and put him to bed.”
The mother of the child, for her part, limited herself to saying that her partner “That day it got out of hand” with the boy and tried to exculpate him by ensuring that Aaron “he is a very stupid boy” that “everyone has their way of educating” and that “We hit him to correct him.”
He wanted to give up his son
There is an especially surprising episode that Aaron’s father cannot get out of his mind four years later: during those hours when Aaron’s health worsened in the hospital, Cristina “was calm, she sat next to her partner, took her hand and kissed her,” a police officer said. “We were surprised by his coldness”he added.
His patrol partner added that the child’s mother “was more concerned about the situation of her and her partner than that of the minor” and that she even expressed her desire to relinquish custody of her son if he finally survived the latest beating. : “Said did not feel able to take care of the childwhoever had to take over because she wanted to give him up”.
“To hurt me”
There is a question that will accompany Aaron’s father all his life: “If he did not feel capable of educating and caring for the child, as he later declared, why didn’t you give it to me? She knew that I was crazy about my son, that I would have done anything for him… but she preferred to kill him. I can’t get it out of my head chose to murder him to harm me. My baby’s life was taken for me.”
Shortly before learning that those responsible for the death of his baby will spend a large part of their lives in prison, as he had requested through his lawyer Marcos García Montes, Félix stepped on a maternity floor again, as when six years ago Aaron was born. In a room similar to where he first held his child in his arms, became a father again.
The day Félix’s second son was born, the man asked to see the psychologist at the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid to help him manage all his memories. “Nobody warns you that such a trauma haunts you for life and relentlessly, no matter how hard you try to rebuild yourself and move on. Sadness colors all the happy moments you have.” The father then saw that the nurses had drawn a baby, a cloud and an angel on the child’s maternity bracelet. When his son is older, Felix will tell him who his brother Aaron was.