10/04/2024 21:37hs.
Junior Benítez was sentenced to five years in prison last Tuesday for the crimes of coercion, threats, damage and illegal use of firearms against the family of Anabelia Ayala, his former partner and with whom he had a relationship for more than five years until that she took her own life last New Year’s. After knowing his sentence, The former soccer player spoke this Wednesday night and accused Juan Carlos Ayala, the victim’s father, of being violent, after he also gave statements hours before.
“He is a typical psychopath. My daughter was monitored 24 hours a day through the tablet. She was continually threatening her, intimidating her. Sometimes I heard how they talked and it was the threatening voice, blaming her. The psychopath does not recognize his actions. Junior thinks he’s in prison because of me and not because of what he did. “He is aware,” Ayala told Infobae.
And Benítez responded through his personal Instagram account and with different posts. In the first of them, he began with the defense of him and mainly accused Anabelia’s father. “The time has come to tell and make the truth visible to everyone, so that everyone can see and draw their conclusion, since the other party, “From 2021 to this day, he was in charge of inventing, dirtying and defaming my image with lies and without any proof, nothing more than just sayings about sayings,” the former player expressed in principle.
And then, he warned that he would begin to upload screenshots of chats in which Anabelia told him about the mistreatment she received from her father: “Next, I will begin to upload chats of Anabelia telling me about how she was mistreated in different ways by her father who loves me today. put the backpack of what he did to Anabelia and his wife Cecilia all his life. And as I said, everyone draws their own conclusions… We are all bad at a poorly told story.”
Junior Benítez’s posts on his Instagram account. (@junior_benitez23)
In the second post he made, he began to share the screenshots of chats he had with Anabelia in 2020. In his description, he provided a first explanation, in which he pointed directly against his ex-partner’s father: “Me being in Mexico and Anabelia in Argentina, in his parents’ house receiving all kinds of abuse from his father: beatings, insults, mockery and many other things… And today the Ni Una Menos flag is put up? With what face? And I am the psychopath, the violent one and thousands of other things according to this man?
“They cut off my WiFi, they break my door, they pull my hair out and they told me that they took out the bed. That’s enough, they make me shit,” says one of Anabelia’s chats, although without directly mentioning her father. In another, he showed a screenshot of a chat between the victim and her mother, who tells her that she separated from her father because she was tired of “his threats and abuse.”
Junior Benítez’s posts on his Instagram account. (@junior_benitez23)
In multiple captures shared by Benítez, it appears that Anabelia, his ex-partner, writes to him asking him to be in a relationship with him again. In the description of one of her posts, Junior explained the context: “And supposedly for them I had her kidnapped in Mexico…. Kidnapped. And she begging to return to Mexico and then travel together to my other destination (club) in Ecuador, to which she also traveled… So,kidnapped and deprived of everything in what way? Yes, I paid for her tickets and she traveled most of the time alone or took them out herself because she had my cards, home banking and bank accounts… And that is registered in migrations and it is easy to confirm the entries and exits… They are not my inventions, eh.”
Junior Benítez’s posts on his Instagram account. (@junior_benitez23)
The conviction of Junior Benítez
Although the prosecution requested six years and charged him with aggravated coercion, damage, computer damage, threats, disobedience and illegal possession of a weapon of war, Judge Antonio Miguel Balicki The Oral Correctional Court No. 8 of Lomas de Zamora awarded him a lesser sentence (five years).
In fact, for the family’s lawyers, the fact that the woman was not present benefited the footballer. “We could not prove the aggravated coercion because the victim is Anabelia and, since she was not there, we had to give up on that.“, acknowledged the lawyer of the complaint days ago in dialogue with TN.
On the other hand, the case investigating the striker for the death of the young woman will also remain ongoing given that The victim’s family accuses that the suicide was induced because, at the moment of consummating it, Anabelia Ayala I would have been on a video call with him.
The family of Anabelia Ayala, former partner of Junior Benítez. (Photo: Emmanuel Fernández)
The chronology of the case
Junior Benitez He was detained again on January 12 after it was learned that, hours before his ex-girlfriend took her life, he violated house arrest to harass her.
The forward and Anabelia Ayala They lived together in Mexico in 2019, when the footballer arrived Atlético San Luis after passing through Argentines. However, after a year, She returned to Buenos Aires after being a victim of different episodes of violence by the player.
In 2021, the forward returned to the country after a year in Dolphin from Ecuador and continued harassing his ex. In fact, in January of that year, He went to the Ayala family house, threatened the victim’s father with a gun y set fire to some of his belongings. After the complaint about this fact, in March 2022, Benítez was convicted and detained for six months. However, When he regained his freedom he attacked again.
In February 2023, disobeyed the restraining order he had to approach the victim and her family, He threatened them with a knife and punctured the tires of Ayala’s car, the father of his ex-girlfriend. Besides, beat him brutally and ended up arrested.
Finally, The victim took his own life on January 1which is why the striker was arrested, given that the family accuses that the suicide was induced because, at the time of consummating it, as mentioned above, Anabelia would have been on a video call with the footballer.
The incessant request for justice from the relatives of Anabelia Ayala, Junior Benítez’s ex-partner who ended up committing suicide. (Photo: Infobae)