Fabiola Yañez spoke about alleged violence she suffered for years alongside Alberto Fernández

Argentina’s former first lady, Fabiola Yáñez, said she feared for her safety and said she was a victim of harassment by former President Alberto Fernández (2019-2023), whom she accused of gender violence, according to an interview published by the news portal Infobae.

“I’m scared,” said Yáñez. The Argentine judge in charge of the case, Julián Ercolini, ordered that the former first lady’s custody be reinforced in Madrid, where she lives with her two-year-old son, the fruit of her more than decade-long relationship with Fernández.

“He spent two months threatening me every other day that if I did this, if I did that, he would commit suicide,” Yáñez said, referring to the former president.

This is the first interview the 43-year-old former journalist has given since she filed a complaint against Fernández for gender violence after photographs came to light showing her with bruises on her arm and face.

“Today I couldn’t leave my house, they put jammers so I couldn’t leave my house. Jammers that made the car turn off,” he said, while requesting that the Justice investigate him. “I have protected this man from so many things. Those videos that appeared the other day are nothing compared to what he did,” said Yáñez about a video that was made public days ago in which the voice supposedly of Fernández can be heard – whose image is not seen – while he jokes with a young entertainment journalist who is drinking and laughing in the presidential office.

Yáñez also claimed that she suffered “telephone harassment and psychological terrorism” from the former president and that she did not receive help despite the fact that “many people” knew about the alleged situation of violence between the couple while they were both living together in the presidential residence in Buenos Aires.

The 65-year-old former president has denied all the accusations. “The truth of the facts is different,” Fernández wrote on social media.

The courts raided Fernández’s home in Buenos Aires and seized his mobile phone, as well as imposing restrictions on him, such as prohibiting him from leaving the country, according to judicial sources cited by the local press.