This Six-Year-Old Girl Kidnapped By Her Dad In Spain Has Been Found Dead At The Bottom Of The Sea
Thousands of women in Spain have joined demonstrations to protest gender and domestic violence in the country after the body of a six-year-old girl who was kidnapped by her father was discovered on the seabed.
Thousands of women in Spain have joined demonstrations to protest gender and domestic violence in the country after the body of a six-year-old girl who was kidnapped by her father was discovered on the seabed.
Six-year-old Olivia was kidnapped with her one-year-old sister, Anna, by her father in April.
On Thursday Jun. 10, Olivia’s body was discovered inside a sports bag, weighed down by an anchor, about five kilometers (three miles) off the coast of the island of Tenerife, where she lived.
Another similar bag was found empty nearby, and investigators are still searching for Anna and their father, Tomás Gimeno.
The girls’ mother had told police that her ex-husband had called her to tell her she would never see her daughters again after he kidnapped them while they were visiting him on Apr. 27, according to the Guardian.
The case has caused anger and shock across Spain, with thousands taking to the streets to demand justice.
In San Sebastián, protesters chanted, “We’re not dying, they’re killing us!”
In Madrid, Marta Carramiñana, a member of the Madrid Feminist Movement and the 8-M women’s day movement told El País: “They are murdering us and we want to stay alive. We need feminist education from an early age to combat this violence, because these men aren’t crazy or sick, they are healthy children of the patriarchy.”
Many politicians, including the prime minister and the equality minister, as well as civil society groups have condemned Olivia’s death and showed support for the girls’ mother, Beatriz Zimmermann.
In the week of May 17 alone, five women were killed in gender violence cases in Spain, according to El País. Since 2013, 41 children have been murdered and 1,096 women have lost their lives since 2003 in other gender violence incidents.
