Álex, the nine-year-old boy allegedly murdered by Francisco Javier Almeida after sexually assaulting him in Lardero, was the “hero” of his brother, who will always be a person with “a maladjustment, like his parents”, as reported by the psychologist who is treating the child, seven years old at the time of the event.
In the fourth session of the trial, by popular jury, that the Provincial Court of Logroño is carrying out against Francisco Javier Almeida, different specialists have described, at the request of the prosecution, how Álex’s family are also “direct victims and will not be able to to have a normal life again.”
The first to testify have been the psychologists of the SOS Rioja-Cruz Roja Immediate Response Team, who have recounted their intervention that October 28, 2021, when they received a call to attend to some parents who were next to their son while he was they were resuscitating
They went to the place and found the mother embracing the lifeless body of her son and the father “absent, with a lost look.” The two were “in shock.” Since then, the care they have been given has been “continuous because they have a serious psychological condition.”
Álex’s mother has “strong emotional pain” that affects her on a “psychological, social, family, and even work” level. She has nightmares and presents depressive symptoms.
The psychologist has reported how she experiences nightmares, inability to access activities of daily living, fear and insecurity. Álex’s mother “re-experiences” what happened that night.
That night, both “lived through a traumatic situation that left them with a very strong shock.” She has a pathological duel made chronic by circumstances and certain depressive symptoms that not only do not improve, but are getting worse. He, for his part, finds himself in “frozen mourning, he is not able to face situations that remind him of the experience, he rejects everything related to the death of his son and that night.” They are “victims with permanent sequelae.”
Regarding Álex’s brother, then seven years old, his therapist has reported how he presents post-traumatic stress disorder. He is not able to have a restful sleep and, in addition to emotional sequelae, he has cognitive sequelae: demotivation and lack of concentration. He presents radical changes, from animation to anger, frustration; with tantrums out of the ordinary. A child who had always been “very stable” for whom his brother was his “hero”.
The child repeats his brother’s behaviors as a way of “maintaining” him, the psychologist said, who could not help but burst into tears. The brother has the “obsessive idea that he has to be a policeman to protect other children.”
He explained that the child “does not have a developed brain” and that, because of what happened, he will have “inappropriate and maladaptive behaviors when he reaches adolescence.” They are not having the upbringing that he would have had and everything will be part of his personality and will also affect him on a cognitive level.
Today the psychologists who wrote the report on the situation of the family also appeared. They have influenced that her mother relives what happened that night, with images that appear “over and over again.” She can’t go out at night, she has a physiological reaction of fear.
He is in a “pathological duel”, which “stays fixed and cannot be overcome”; he wakes up with panic attacks and is unable to enjoy everyday things. “This makes him a direct victim of the injuries,” he specified.
The father presents a different picture, since each person reacts differently. That night he suffered a “blocking shock.” He is in “frozen grief,” meaning he “holds on to this can’t have happened,” with a “tremendous presence of avoidance behaviors.”
He is not able to verbalize what happened; He is in a state of anesthesia, of affective dullness, a state in which you can no longer feel happiness, he finds himself using resources to avoid facing the facts and he has not done anything that gives him pleasure: “he has left everything, He’s dead while he’s alive.” He is “a blocked person.”
As for the little brother, he said that “he has been deprived of having a healthy family”, because “beyond” a possible “overprotection and hyperalert state” of his parents “he is in an environment where his parents are neither happy nor healthy “.
The impact of mental injuries is great because “the smaller you are, the greater the consequences” because “your brain is developing.”
The boy “hears his brother’s name in the supermarket and throws himself to the ground in a tantrum: they have stolen his identity because he was Álex’s brother.”
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
