The legal battle between former Argentine President Alberto Fernández and his ex-partner, Fabiola Yáñez, who reported him for gender-based violence, continued on Monday. 

Fernández claimed that he “never beat” Yañez and that she had been led into filing the criminal complaint by someone “with ulterior motives.” He also acknowledged that verbal violence had taken place but alleged it was mutual and that it never got physical.

That same day, Yáñez also filed a document with the judiciary retelling the abuse she suffered and detailing more violent episodes, including an abortion Fernández allegedly had her carry out.  

Alberto Fernández’s interview

Fernández’s statements were made in an interview he gave to Spanish publication El País on Friday and were published Monday night. 

In the interview, the expresident once again denied any physical violence against Yáñez and said he doesn’t remember receiving the pictures and messages depicting the alleged abuse his former partner had received, which were leaked on Friday in an Argentine outlet. 

“My chats with Fabiola have disappeared [from my phone]. I have no way of verifying what that whole conversation was about,” he said, adding that he had “no idea” when it might have happened. 

In the leaked messages, Fernández says that he feels “ill” and begs her to stop talking about the abuse and sending him pictures of her injuries. “It’s very possible that I felt like that in certain circumstances because I felt suffocated and overwhelmed,” he explained. 

“I didn’t beat her,” he insisted.

Fernández had already denied the accusations in a communiqué on Tuesday, saying the acts described by Yañez in her complaint were false. Speaking to El País, he claimed that “someone” had led his former partner into making a legal filing and added that President Javier Milei’s administration was taking “political advantage” of the situation.

“I am being accused of something I haven’t done,” the ex-president reiterated. “I didn’t beat Fabiola. I have never beaten a woman.” 

When asked what happened in the picture of Yañez’s black eye, he said he would only “tell that to the judges,” refusing to give further details and adding that he could prove his innocence.

Fernández acknowledged that there was verbal violence in their relationship, saying that when people get angry, they say “many things and that can be offensive.” He claimed to have been the recipient of verbal aggression as well. 

He alluded to a personal issue of his ex-partner as part of the reason why she’s accusing him. “I know what personal situation she was in, and I don’t want to expose her. To answer you, I would have to say things I can’t tell the press,” he said, clarifying to the reporters that he had only agreed to talk to them to tell them that he “was not responsible for any of those things.”

Abortion, violence, and infidelity

On Monday, Yañez filed a legal document retelling the episodes she claims to have suffered during her relationship with Fernández. In addition to accusing him of serious injuries in the context of gender-based violence as well as coercive threats, she is also accusing him of “reproductive violence,” claiming that Fernández made her get an abortion in 2016.

Yañez and Fernández first started their relationship in 2013 and got engaged in 2016. Shortly after moving in together, she got pregnant, which sparked a crisis in the couple. “He showed [how much despise and] rejection he had for our unborn child,” she wrote in her legal presentation. 

“He told me, ‘This can’t happen; I’m in shock,’ and started harassing me, saying it was too soon, that he wasn’t ready, and hadn’t even introduced me to his son yet,” Yañez said in the document, which was published in media outlet Infobae. [Fernández’s 29 year-old child, Tani, identifies themselves as non-binary, and, according to their social media, uses they/them pronouns. The Buenos Aires Herald respects the chosen pronouns and the right to self-identify for all individuals featured in our stories.]

According to what she says in the document, Fernández allegedly told her that he “couldn’t tell anyone” that they were having a child. 

“We have to sort this out; you have to get an abortion,” were his words, according to Yañez. Before she ended her pregnancy, “he told his child I was pregnant so I could be blamed for the abortion,” the former first lady added.

Yañez and Fernández did eventually have a son together, Francisco, born in 2021.

Regarding the picture in which she has a black eye, Yañez said it happened during an argument while they were getting into bed. “We had argued earlier, heavily, as usual, and to end the fight, he hit me from his side of the bed with a terrible fist punch,” Yañez said, adding that although she screamed, he turned around and went to sleep.

According to the text, Yañez had to stay inside the presidential residence in Olivos for days after her eye got visibly black. She said she called the head of the presidential medical team at the time, Federico Saavedra, but that he just gave her homeopathic medicine for the pain.

She also said that she didn’t file a complaint against him initially because she was “asked not to,” but that he later threatened to “make her look sick” if she spoke. 

The messages she and Fernández sent each other were first found by the judiciary while investigating Fernández’s secretary’s phone in a corruption case in June. Yañez decided to file the complaint on August 6 after the press reported there were incriminating chats and pictures of Fernández having committed domestic violence against her. She will give testimony on Tuesday via conference call from Madrid, Spain, where she currently lives with her son and mother.

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