Roman van der Dussen climbs the sleeve of the jacket and shows a deep scar. He runs through the right forearm in oblique over 10 centimeters. "Tattoos of life", he says he as if it were any scratch. The brand is due to the day he tried to cut the veins with a tuna can in his cell of the Alhaurín de la Torre jail (Málaga). He does not remember the exact date, but it was after knowing the sentence that on May 25, 2005 he sentenced him to 15 years and six months in prison for sexual assault, injuries and theft of three women.
"It's a loose moment I had," subtraction of importance to suicide attempt. "You think it's going to be in jail until 2019 and that you better take your life, because it is very hard that every day spit on your face, call you rapist, son of a bitch ... and with this you go to sleep; You scream for it for the window: 'Violin, violet, son of a bitch, rapist fucking, you're going to die ...!' "He says in the restaurant where he has cited, at the Nautical Club of Palma de Mallorca , the city where it resides since recovering freedom.
Dutch, 48, settled in Spain since 2000, has been imprisoned 4,545 days -12 years, five months and nine days - for a crime he did not commit. It would have been much less to accept the treatment that the lawyer of him gave him before the trial.
- I have reached an agreement with the accusations and the fiscal ministry: you admit the crimes and the sentence will be only seven years old. Almost two has passed in preventive and in a few months it will be free.
This was thus transmitted by the lawyer in a triumphant tone.
- I'm not going to sign a fucking day for something I did not do; I want to go to trial.
That's how he answered.
The trial was held at the provincial audience of Málaga and the victims declared protected by a screen. The three had been attacked between 05.00 and 06.00 hours of August 10, 2003 on different streets of the Journal of Elola de Fuengirola (Málaga).
The first, A., 29, then, had been beaten, raped and stolen. Half an hour later, M., 32, received a surprising punch and she would have been equally violated if not because the aggressor went to the race with her bag when she saw a vehicle approaching. Nor was the third attack consummated because a neighbor, alerted by the cries of E., a 18-year-old girl who received blows lying on the floor, chased the man from the balcony.
The three assailants and the Balcony Witness pointed out during the trial "without any doubt" to Roman as the author of the facts. A. and E. They cried during their statement and M. He shouted at him "son of a bitch", "that they take you to hell."
"It is understandable, I have studied the subject and there is a psychologist, Margarita [Diges], who claims that the victims, after suffering an emotional impact are shock and that more than 50% of the recognition are erroneous," he says, comprehensive with the Women who accused him and citing the professor of psychology of the memory of the Autonomous University of Madrid Margarita Diges, author of witnesses, suspected and false memories.
"At that time, when a policeman, who is a trusted person, he tells you that this person can be, you induce that it is. I said it since the first day I entered the tale: 'FEAL OF THE FUEngirola National Police' "He adds pointing directly to the agents who took care of the case, who accuses persuading the victims so that they will opt for him.
The three declared hours after the aggressions. Although his descriptions of the attacker did not match exactly - "of strong complexion", "athletic", "strong-robust", "short brown hair", "long blond", "dark brown" - a robot portrait was elaborated. One of them was shown about the photographs of the signed them that they had around 30 years and could not recognize none.
However, 12 days later yes. He looked at the album again and pointed to "without any kind of doubts" Van der Dussen. With the same forcefulness, the Balcony Witness was identified. Another of the victims also put the finger of her about the photo of the Dutch: "Almost completely, although with a small margin of doubt," she said.
Roman was on police files because he had been arrested several times. A former girlfriend accused him of proselytism and a prostitute of rape. Both denunciations were withdrawn. Yes, an order of search and capture against him was in force for breaching the obligation to capture every 15 days in a court after provoking important destruction in the urban furniture a night of drunkenness. "I'm not a saint," he says about these police background "but, as they say in Spain, they made a suit."
To the photographic identification followed a recognition wheel: "And I was the only guiri. They put me with three Spaniards Morenos, some with glasses even. They all pointed me to me, of course".
The rotundity of the victims was the only position of charge against him. Surprisingly, the court that judged it prioritized the testimony of these to the scientific evidence that exculpated it: a forensic report collapsed the DNA of the aggressor, extracted from the consummated rape, with that of Romano and concluded that they did not belong to the same subject. The Dutch, in addition, assured that the night of the events was in another location, Benalmádena, at a party at the house of some English friends. He facilitated the contacts of these, but neither of the parties -the defense, called them as witnesses.
"A police car stops in front of me. A Citroën Picasso, the usual car of the National Police. They lower two agents. I want to continue the shopping center, but one of them for me. 'Are you Roman van der Dussen?' ". This is how Roman begins the story of her arrest, when he left the beach in a swimsuit and flip flops, in the book my Spanish nightmare. 12 years innocent in prison, which he has published in the Netherlands and for which he sees editorial in Spain.
In it he also tells how he was entering jail with the rapist poster hanging around his neck. "'A step forward,' says the guard. It gives me a slight push on the back. The big difference with the police station is that here I do not have wives. 'Here you have it. The words resonate in my head. The guard closes the door, I turn a moment when I listen to the click. He moves away. And without I see it coming I receive the first blow ... ". The story continues with a dozen prisoners giving him a beating of which he retains some scars - "tattoos of life" - in the face.
Nothing else enter prison, his case and that of Dolores Vázquez crossed collaterally. On September 2, 2003 he was arrested Roman and 16 days later Tony King, Assassin of Sonia Colabantes and also from Rocío Wanninkhof, crime he had been condemned Dolores Vázquez. "Tony Alexander King is in the next cell," he writes in his book. "His arrival was a whole event, everyone knew immediately that he was. I tried to talk to him, because maybe he is a fatigue partner. 'Hey, Tony, Listen Mate! I'm Roman, from Holland. I have to Talk to you. Can you talk? I am innocent here. You too? ', I asked through the window, screaming.' Yes! ', he answered, after he had repeated it several times. But I did not want to talk more with me".
Sonia Colabantes was killed on August 14, four days after the aggressions he was charged Roman. He is convinced that the social alarm that produced the coat case decisively influenced the arrest of it: "They wanted to solve it soon and took me as a head of Turkish," he concludes.
"Alhaurín, Granada, Murcia, Villena, Albocàsser, Picassent and Palma de Mallorca", recitance of memory the seven prisons for which it happened. He soon learned that he needed protection and for 12 cans of tuna and five weekly water cars he hired Lithuanian Alius. He began to sit at the table with the prisoners of Eta, tells him, because they did not walk to the violator's hunt in prison.
In 12 years, five months and nine days did not enjoy a single permission. They were not given them because she refused to follow reeducation courses. "That meant recognizing that he was guilty," he says. He could not go out to say goodbye to his sick mother or to attend her funeral. The history of his mother was one of the arguments that he repeated the police as proof that he could not be a sexual aggressor.
"Mom was only 14 years old when a man of color raped her, she came from Catholic environments, so I could not abort. He had a mestizo girl, being a teenager in a small community. Everyone was looking at her when he was going through The street. For my stepister, Jolanda, it has also been terrible. He never felt accepted and did not receive love, because mom always saw the rapist's face, "he reads himself in his book. Jolanda, Roman Account, fell into prostitution and drugs and ended up committing suicide.
Only one year and two months after being convicted, in November 2006, in London there was a crucial fact that took a turning to the case, but that Roman would not know up to four years later. A man, Mark Dixie, had been arrested accused of the murder and rape of an 18-year-old model. By introducing the British police, the DNA of it at the base of the Interpol obtained a coincidence. It was compatible with the aggression in Fuengirola by which Romano was in prison. Dixie had resided in the city in 2002 and 2003. He was therefore there when the facts occurred.
The genetic report sent by the British did not include all DIXIE DNA markers, so the Spanish police moved the matter to the Fuengirola Instruction Court to ask for a more complete sample. The Court of Fuengirola had no competences for this, he passed it to another court, this to another ... The petition was lost in the judicial tangle and was archived in 2007.
Four years later, Roman, already known to the existence of Dixie, hired the lawyer Silverio García. "He contacted me in 2011 and he told me the subject and that was when I presented the recourse of revision to the Supreme, who denied it but reopened the case and sent the provincial audience [de Málaga] as an urgent basis that completed the DNA police report" , explain the lawyer.
There is no space here to tell all the vicissitudes that the case suffered again, including the mistake of requesting a Roman DNA sample instead of Dixie. The final result was that the genetic examination was not completed in full until 2015.
On February 10, 2016, the Supreme was absolved Roman from the violation of Fuengirola, nine years and three months after the DIXIE DNA was related to this aggression. The next day, he was released in the prison of Palma de Mallorca, where he was then.
"The official came. 'Grab things'. I think, 'Well, another jail'. 'Where are we going?' 'Wherever you want'. I flipped," he says. "I walked down the street looking for a phone to call my family, but there were no public telephones, I went to a bar to take a cut, took a couple because they were more good than in jail, and I saw myself leaving in The news ", tells its first steps in freedom.
He was acquitted by the Supreme Court of consummated sexual assault but not of the other two attacks. "The sentence said 'same geographical area, same modus operandi, same author'", he repeats several times throughout the interview. Romano van der Dussen does not conform with freedom and wants him to be declared also innocent of the two other crimes.
He is his lawyer, Silverio García, who explains how he seems to have vanished the only bay they had to get it. In 2019, a documentary was released in the Netherlands, I did not do it, and it was collected in it the testimony of a Spanish journalist who had shown one of the other two victims of the photographs of Roman and Dixie. The journalist She told that the woman had recognized Dixie as the true author. Through this editor she has tried the lawyer that the two victims testify, but "by family pressures" and "perhaps for fear of losing compensation" have been denied.
Romano gave the victims about 12,000 euros of the 147,700 he received in 2010 as compensation for error. "Procurator and lawyer, three years of apartment rental, yacht pattern studios, psychiatric report," he tells what he has spent the rest of the money.
The aforementioned psychiatric expertise, which commissioned the basis for claiming millions of compensation that denied him, says that Roman, who was diagnosed in ADHD childhood -Trastorming of attention deficit and hyperactivity - suffers from panic disorders, major depression with anxiety and disorder obsessive compulsive.
It has been mentioned last that after leaving prison, it was formed as a boat pattern. He got the title and now he would be on the coasts of Algeria working on a tourist sailboat if the trip meant being six months away from home and the couple of him has asked not to go.
Your partner is Nati, a volunteer of an NGO to which he met in prison. "She spoke with the people in the yard but I never approached me. First of all, because you feel bad about yourself, they have instilled for years that you are a rapist and your self-esteem is on the soil. But that day was about to express myself. I told him I'm going to pay the sentence and that when I leave I am going to avenge me, that I am going to kill many people and leave a letter to explain me. She calmed me, told me that revenge does not lead nowhere. "
Date Of Update: 07 November 2021, 20:32
