A 22-year-old woman has been arrested in Barcelona accused of harassing and threatening to kill actress Candela Peña, 46, and her 10-year-old son over the internet, the National Police reported on Wednesday.
The arrested woman has published thousands of messages of "admiration/disappointment" and "love/hate" towards the interpreter in the last eight months, but the tone and gravity changed when the threatening entries began to implicate the actress's son, with the disclosure on the networks of a photo of the minor with the phrase: "I swear I'll kill him."
The police assure that the detainee "monitored and controlled the movements of the victim and knew where she was and what she was doing at all times."
The police took action on the matter after Candela Peña filed a complaint for the "incessant harassment" and the "serious death threats" that she and her son suffered through social networks, especially on Instagram (Peña has here more than 300,000 followers), where he already disclosed the harassment he suffered in May of last year.
The researchers have called this performance Operación Garoé, the name of a sacred lime tree on the island of El Hierro, but which is actually a name in homage to Candela Peña and her role as an unconventional judge in the series
Hierro
.
The actress, according to the police statement, delivered more than 40 pages with screenshots of hundreds of publications addressed to her and messages received on her Instagram account, where the protagonist of films such as
Rosa's Wedding,
Princesses
or
Numbered Days
is especially active.
The siege that Peña suffered led her to plunge into a state of “anguish and concern” that led her to fear that the now arrested person would inflict some kind of “personal harm” on her.
This is one of the messages with threats to her son that the actress received. NATIONAL POLICE (Europa Press)
The messages increased in tone and aggressiveness, until they became "harassment," according to the police.
The jump occurred when the alleged stalker published a photo of Peña's son with the text "I swear I'll kill him."
One of the main concerns of the actress was to find out where the stalker had gotten the image of her minor.
I love you
– CandelaPeña (@candela_penya) February 2, 2022
The publications were always made from false profiles, whose creation was only intended to harass and threaten the victim.
The agents came to count 20 accounts on social networks dedicated to attacking Peña.
After receiving judicial permission, the investigators managed to identify the alleged stalker, who turned out to be a 22-year-old girl living in the province of Barcelona.
The woman was handed over to a court in Martorell (Barcelona) and she was later released.
One of the difficulties of the investigation was precisely the large number of false profiles created to harass the actress.
Peña initially thought that her stalker was a man, since the detainee created the accounts with male names, explains the chief inspector of the network section of the Central Police Cybercrime Unit, Roberto Fernández.
The inspector assures that the cases of harassment in networks of politicians and celebrities are "usual", but generally they are not so prolonged in time or so virulent.
"There's always the risk that bullying will lead to the possibility of causing some kind of physical harm, but this situation did not occur," he says.
After receiving information from Instagram about the IP data, the agents were able to link the creation of the accounts with an address in a town in the Barcelona metropolitan area.
Then began a second phase of the investigation, "more traditional": the suspect was subjected to surveillance and monitoring and, finally, arrested on January 26.
At the police station, she accepted her right not to testify, although the police have no doubts about the authorship of the messages.
Another of the threatening messages against the actress disclosed by the police.
This is not the first episode of harassment suffered by the actress.
In June of last year, she reported that a man waited for her on the street while she masturbated.
On those dates, the interpreter had already denounced that she suffered harassment through the networks.
During the Malaga Theater Festival last year, she denounced the harassment against her and her son.
“Cyberbullying sucks,” she said then her.
By then she had already received threats against her son.
“What about your son?
I'm going to kill him", "I shit on your son and your whole family", "Daughter of the great bitch, as long as you don't take away the complaint I swear I'll kill your son and this time it's not a joke", are some of the phrases that the stalker dedicated to him, according to what Candela Peña told
Elle
magazine .
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