"Since we separated, he never stopped harassing me. And although he lives in an area where there are a lot of parishes, he came to the same one as me to bother."
The one who speaks is Dolores, the woman who was saved from a femicide during a mass in Lanús.
Dolores Rolón (60) tells
Clarín
that five years ago she separated from Oscar Eduardo Casagrande (63), the man who attacked her in the Nuestra Señora de los Trabajadores church, in Villa Caraza: "He did not want to separate, but I I said: 'I've come this far, I'm tired of the
psychological violence
that he wanted to exert on me but he couldn't do it' I'm not afraid of him".
The couple lived 32 years in a house located in Ukraine at 4500, in Lanús.
In the place the man had also put a pizzeria.
When tired of her mistreatment she asked for a divorce, they actually separated because they couldn't hire lawyers.
As it was the home of Dolores's family, he had to leave and
began to threaten her with death
.
The woman only thinks about the well-being of her children.
That is the only reason why she did not want to report her ex-partner again.
"If she denounced him for the third time, they would take him to jail, that's why she didn't want to denounce him, because my daughter and grandson support him. I don't want to hurt them," she confesses.
Dolores lives with her son.
The Nuestra Señora los Trabajadores church in Villa Caraza, Lanús, where the attempted femicide occurred.
Photo Andrés D'Elia
Casagrande has been detained since Sunday at noon when he tried to kill Dolores in the middle of the mass in honor of the Virgin Candelaria of Copacabana, patron saint of Bolivia.
He was in the courtyard of the parish.
"I was sitting in the first pew because I had to receive the band like every year. I took care of the Virgin. Then he appears shouting that he was going to kill me and also the priest. Nobody thought he had a knife," says Dolores in the seconds before the attack.
And he clarifies: "I didn't get to look up,
he stabbed me, but the people ran me away
. They were able to grab him, so they prevented him from attacking me and the priest, who had not realized what was happening. Later he wanted to kill himself, so the people took the knife from him".
One of the people who took the knife from him ended up with a hand injury.
"There were many people from the Bolivian community, as well as the ministers who give communion," says the priest Adrián Marzilli (55), who officiated at the mass.
The house in which the victim and perpetrator lived together for 32 years until Dolores could no longer bear the mistreatment.
Photo Andrés D'Elia
The parish priest remembers that Casagrande had already taken the host, and after that he pounced on his ex-partner.
He has been working in that church for four years and says that nothing like this has ever happened.
"The lady usually comes to mass, I rarely saw him," she says.
The victim pressed the
panic button
three times and the police arrived within minutes.
"People saved me, that's the truth. They also saved the priest
," says Dolores, who works as a pedicurist.
She is confident that the attacker will end up in prison for the femicide attempt: "If the Argentine Justice does things as it should, he will not appear again."
It will be the task of the Functional Instruction Unit No. 8, specialized in family and gender violence, of the Avellaneda-Lanús Judicial Department, in charge of María Soledad Garibaldi, to respond to the victim.
A history of violence that left scars
This attempted femicide, like so many others, shows that violence did not appear from one second to the next.
In the case of Dolores, for years the complaints end in nothing because the attacker, despite having a perimeter restraining order, was hanging around Dolores' house.
Attempted femicide in a church in Villa Caraza, Lanús, where Father Adrián Marzilli celebrated mass.
When they were together, Casagrande "didn't want Dolores to go to church, or anywhere."
For her, that place became her second home.
"In the parish I got a family, it's my support. I've been there all my life," says the woman.
After the separation, violence increased.
"He always muted me on the street. It was normal. He told me I was a whore, that I slept with the priest and with everyone. I separated because of the mistreatment," she recounts.
And she adds: "He treated me like a servant all my life.
I ended up getting sick in the spine and stomach due to nerves.
Now I'm going for the second biopsy and I have a disabled card."
For Dolores it was very difficult for Casagrande to leave his home.
"He built upstairs and wanted to stay. I told him not to do that, to buy land for our children instead of building," explains Dolores.
But she didn't listen.
On the corner of Dolores's house lives her sister-in-law Sara.
"He told me once that he was going to kill her, it's been more than a year since then,"
he tells
Clarín
from the living room of her house while he takes care of her great-granddaughter.
Sara is worried about Dolores, whom she considers a daughter: "Since I was 14 years old, I have been with her brother, who passed away. We all live in the same house. She worked from a very young age in La Salada and got ahead, despite everything."
And she "asks God
that Casagrande continue to be detained because otherwise he will end up killing her."
MG
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