Some members of the municipal corporation have spent since Tuesday appeasing the "desire for lynching of many residents" of Baleira who telephone to vent.
The same day that snow buried the streets of this town in the mountains of Lugo, the news fell like an avalanche that in a house in the (not far away) village of Vilaselle, a girl between the ages of seven and 13 had been raped. years, until in 2016, already 14, she gave birth to a baby in the hospital.
At the same time, everyone found out this week that the causes of the horror had been the victim's older sister, who forced the abuse, the little girl's brother-in-law and his brother.
Nobody knew anything until Tuesday when the three accused members of that family appeared in the press, sitting on the bench of the Provincial Court,
The slowness of Justice and the secrecy with which the investigation was carried out from the court of A Fonsagrada (Lugo) to protect the minor also benefited her relatives, who until now have continued to lead a normal life in a town of 1,158 inhabitants where everyone knows each other.
When the prosecutor's agreement has not yet been embodied in the sentence, the accused couple has returned to the stone house that lives in the heart of Vilaselle, a nucleus in which a retired magistrate, the deputy mayor, also lives with their families and a rancher.
They never suspected what her little girl suffered when they saw her "shy", "self-conscious", walking through the village.
Village of Vilaselle (Baleira), close to O Cádavo, the main nucleus of the municipality.ÓSCAR CORRAL
They didn't know anything at school either, nor later, when he started high school at the institute of the neighboring Castroverde Town Hall.
"She went to class on the bus with me, until during the course she stopped going," summarizes a former classmate of the victim, who is now 21 years old, has studied Education and has remade her life in another Galician province.
“She is intelligent, educated and very pretty”, describes a councilor from the government group: “The last time we saw her here was at the end of 2021 at the funeral home, when her father, a man who had been a postman, died of cancer. but who ended up with a very miserable life and never found out what was happening”.
Between 2015 and 2016, when she became pregnant by one of the two young men who, as they have admitted, raped her in the house where she lived with her sister and their parents, the girl moved to her grandmother's apartment. in the center of Baleira.
Sources from the City Council and residents of the town explain that there was a day of great commotion, when the Civil Guard came to the scene, because the little girl "wanted to commit suicide".
Then, the news spread through the town that the child was pregnant, that she had given birth, that the Xunta had given the baby up for adoption and that the minor herself had been taken to a center in the province.
There they believed that "everything was over", without considering that the father of the newborn could be one of the adults now awaiting sentencing.
Return every 15 days
"But the baby continued to return home every 15 days, to spend the weekend with her family, and no one could imagine that they were the monsters," several neighbors say, with these and other words, who ask not to appear in the press. with their names.
They say they are "afraid", "concerned": "We want Justice to banish these people from Baleira, that they not only sentence them to three years, but 300. But who can have faith in prosecutors and judges? after that?".
“Before we knew it, we all thought of them as troublesome people, who looked for problems where there were none… In a year and a half, or less, they will be back.
And we fear that they will return reinforced, because they see that this atrocity is almost free for them”, warns a PP mayor: “The one who steals an apple bears more punishment… no matter how hard jail is for them,
This Saturday at noon, the people staged a silent rally "against abuses" in the town hall square.
"Terrible news comes out in the press every day, but this is horrifying," lamented residents moved by the aberrations that have begun to come to light this week after the pact with the public ministry.
They confessed to being “horrified”, singularly, by the role played in the trio of defendants by the victim's older sister, a mother of a family who is now 32 years old.
Until this week, the woman, who has an event organization business and actively participated in the party commission, worked with the children of Baleira as a school bus escort.
The news coincided in time that the defendants accepted the sentence, reduced to the minimum expression,
with the snow storm that forced the suspension of classes.
With her thaw, the defendant was no longer on the bus and she had vanished from the WhatsApp group that parents have who take their little ones to the pool.
On Friday, when leaving the Baleira public school, in the main town of O Cádavo, a group of mothers and fathers remembered that Silvia F., the victim's older sister, and Manuel F. —Silvia's husband since 2011 and head of the workshop of a Lugo foundry and flame-cutting company— still live in Vilaselle with their children: a nine-year-old girl who has just received communion and a two-year-old boy.
According to the Prosecutor's account of the facts, it was precisely when she became pregnant with her daughter that the defendant forced her little sister to satisfy her husband's sexual hunger, in addition to the appetites of Fernando, his brother, who had started before the abuses.
Neighborhood concentration in front of the Baleira City Council, on Saturday at noon.ÓSCAR CORRAL
“The news fell like a bomb;
we are in
shock
”, describes the popular mayor, Ángel Enrique Martínez-Puga.
“There are neighbors who have not slept since they found out what happened in Baleira;
out of anger, outrage, because their hair stands on end”, says another member of the local government.
Now, awaiting the court ruling and its execution, everyone wonders what will become of the two minors who remain in the house and for the moment they are content to demonstrate "in silence" because they do not know the content of the indictment with which they initially the Prosecutor's Office claimed 11 years per head.
A manifesto, read at the end, demanded “justice” for the abused young woman on Saturday.
The act, supported by the two political groups of the consistory, was also joined by residents of other municipalities in the mountains of Lugo.
“I know of people who do not come out of fear, because they have children.
But I would go to the concentration even if it was called in Madrid ”, exclaimed a man in O Cádavo.
"Living in this town is going to be difficult for us, knowing that we won't be able to lose sight of them for long," complained one of the neighbors who live closest to the house where "the atrocities were brewing behind closed doors. ”.
The baby that the victim gave birth and that set off the alarms at the hospital is somewhat younger than the eldest daughter of the accused couple.
On the same day of the pact sealed with the Prosecutor's Office at the Hearing, early in the afternoon, the defendant published a quote from Óscar González, an ideologue of emotional intelligence, on Facebook: “Tranquility is not negotiated […] with the With time you learn to hold your tongue […] to withdraw, to avoid those places or people that make you feel uncomfortable.
And you begin to protect your peace… your circle becomes smaller and smaller… and healthier at the same time”.
The cell phones of the residents of the municipality are on fire these days sharing this text and the photos that the couple has happily published so far on this social network, especially a very recent postcard in which Silvia, Manolo and their two offspring appear, in addition to the mother of the defendant and the victim, who has not stopped living with them.
In the bucolic picture they are seen smiling and dressed, all the same, with Christmas pajamas: "We wish you a happy New Year 2023", reads the overprinted text among a shower of golden stars.