A year without Anna and Olivia

On April 27, 2021, a nightmare began from which Beatriz Zimmermann, the girls' mother, will never be able to wake up

Just a year ago
Tomas Gimeno, father of Anna and Olivia, he should have taken his daughters with his mother, Beatriz Zimmermann, as they had agreed. That afternoon a terrible event would begin that kept the whole of Spain in suspense and that put in the spotlight one of the cruelest and until then most unknown sexist violence.
vicarious violence.

Gimeno decided to take the life of his two daughters in a cold and cruel way to also mortally wound Beatriz. Vicarious violence is that which aims to harm women through their loved ones, especially her daughters and sons.
The intention to cause harm to your partner or ex-partner, in this case, at all costs exceeds any affection or feeling you may feel for them. The murder carried out by Gimeno represents the most extreme level of this type of sexist violence that destroys women, but the manipulation of these children so that they turn against the mother, for example, is also vicarious violence, causing a enormous damage also for minors, who are victims of gender violence, just like mothers. The ultimate goal, even paying for it with death,
is the control and dominion over womenin an irrational desire for possession in a power relationship based on inequality.

Vicarious violence, on the table

The murder carried out by Tomás Gimeno has nothing to do with parricide, because his ultimate goal was to cause irreparable damage to his ex-partner, using his two daughters to carry out the action, hence the term vicarious violence, which was included in the
State Pact against Gender Violence in Spain. Despite the case of Anna and Olivia being the most mediatic, and the one that put this type of violence against women on the table, since 2013, the year in which official statistics of minors murdered in the framework of gender violence,
47 minors have been murdered at the hands of their parents (or partners/ex-partners of the mother) for vicarious violence, according to data from the Government Delegation against Gender Violence.

The case of the girls in Tenerife
he was especially harsh and ruthless. From the time of his disappearance along with his father until the discovery of the body of Olivia, the eldest of the sisters, many days of terror, search, uncertainty, false leads, easy headlines and very little tact in such a sensitive case passed. and complex. Beatriz Zimmermann, in a display of heroic strength and hope, gave encouragement and sent positive messages through her social networks so that all the troops would continue in the hard work of finding her daughters.

Between these events, and while the historic search for the oceanographic vessel
Angeles Alvarino day and night he combed the area where the corpses could be, the confusion and ignorance of a large part of the population grew every minute. People around Gimeno insisted that he was incapable of doing any harm to his daughters, not knowing that precisely in vicarious violence, daughters are the weapon, and not the end.
«He was a great father, he always plays with them and drools», affirmed a friend in a television program in full search, to add that of «I would be unable to put my hands on them. He will have escaped and surely he will return ». Although the main hypothesis of the investigators, from the beginning, was the murder, a general aura of hope was created in which nobody wanted to put themselves in the worst case scenario.

Joaquín Amills, president of SOS Disappeared and spokesperson for Beatriz Zimmermann during the entire search period, daily reporting the main advances in the investigation, as well as details of some importance that portrayed Gimeno as a possessive, sexist and dangerous person, with violent episodes in the past against Beatriz and her partner, which demonstrates her sick obsession with possession.

Father Baez enters the scene

Among all the voices that came to assess this murder, especially unpleasant was the
Father Baez's opinionwho defended Tomás Gimeno, placing him as a victim and accusing Beatriz of the death of the girls.
This disgusting fact, which cost him a complaint to the Prosecutor's Office, that the Bishopric set him apart as a parish priest and the general criticism of society, he did it through social networks, with a text and on video, which he tried to eliminate when it was already too late . "Let's stop marriage breakups, reinforce fidelity, let's not give children from one parent to another and thus avoid tragedies," adding that Gimeno "got out of the way so as not to continue suffering." Báez also stated that
"Let's see if there is a psychologist with balls to corroborate what I say."

José Mazuelos, the bishop of the Diocese of the Canary Islands, decided to quickly remove Báez from his office as parish priest, also forbidding him "not to make, in his capacity as a priest, demonstrations and statements in the media or through social networks."

When on June 10 the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands reported that a lifeless body, apparently of a minor, had appeared in the sea, the forces turned to tears, hope, sadness and the heart in a fist.
Olivia's body It was found inside a sports bag at a depth of 1,000 meters. The Ángeles Alvariño achieved the impossible, locating at least one of the bodies and putting an end to the rumors that they were in any part of the world, where by then many calls claimed that they had been seen.

The autopsy confirmed that
the death of the minor was violent. Gimeno did not improvise, he had a plan and he carried it out with a terrifying coldness, making several calls and sending messages, already on the high seas, to the mother of Anna and Olivia, his great obsession. He exemplifies and defines perfectly, sadly, what vicarious violence means and the consequences that leave women.