The night of the crime, Jonathan was Jonathan. A troublesome boy since childhood, who in adolescence asked his friends to call him 'Jonathan the Mafias'. Jonathan, from Fuerteventura. The one who was obsessed, according to his family, with his cousin Vanessa. He grew up with her, like a brother to her. And despite the fact that he had once shown signs of how violent he could be in dealings, Vanessa always excused him: "It's Jonathan, we already know how he is. What is he going to do to us?"

The night he hammered her to death, Jonathan was Jonathan, a 21-year-old boy who chased after girls, with whom he found it very difficult to establish a relationship. "He is a very short person, with a lot of complexes. That is why he has always related to women like this, harassing them. Just seeing how he looked at them was quite repulsive," Nayara, cousin of the murdered Vanessa, now reveals. She attends EL ESPAÑOL and makes one thing clear: "Jonathan never said that he wanted to be a woman, or that he liked boys. That's false."

Because now, Jonathan de Jesús Robaina Santana is being tried for Vanessa's murder and has said that he is not Jonathan. Don't call him that. That she wants to be addressed as Lorena, because he feels like a woman. That is how they have treated him in prison to date, even allowing him to shower apart from the rest of the prisoners. And so his lawyer has asked the judge. The lawyer requested that during all the sessions of the trial the accused be addressed using the name of Lorena, since this has been recognized even by Penitentiary Institutions.

Vanessa Santana, hammered to death at the age of 21

Jonathan or Lorena, the point is that he is in the dock. She is asked for 27 years in prison for the crime of her cousin Vanessa Santana. It happened on June 4, 2018 in Betancuria (Fuerteventura). The accused has confessed to having sneaked into her cousin's house that night and to have given her 30 blows with a hammer that ended her life. She defends Jonathan (or Lorena) that it was an uncontrollable outburst, nothing premeditated. And that he did not commit sexual abuse because he, as a woman, is attracted to men. That is one of the keys to this case.

"I didn't recognize her"

"We were only able to watch over my cousin for four hours. Her face was so disfigured from the beatings that when I saw her I didn't recognize her. The first thing I said was that she wasn't Vanessa," recalls Nayara, the victim's cousin on the part maternal. She, like the rest of the family, doesn't believe anything Jonathan says.

"Of course nobody believes that it was an outburst. Jonathan sneaked into my cousin's house that night with some keys that he had previously stolen from my aunt's house. With gloves to leave no traces, with ropes, two knives and a hammer. When he was done, he turned the bloody mattress over to hide the stains. The bloody clothes were put in a bag and dumped in a vacant house. That's not an outburst."

Jonathan has confessed that he was the one who hit her that night. What remains to be proven is whether the defendant committed sexual abuse after the crime. Because according to the prosecutor, Jonathan proceeded "using extreme violence" and aiming his blows at "vital areas", especially the victim's head, which he did not stop hitting even when he fell to the ground mortally wounded, and that finally, excited by what had happened, "he ejaculated on her."

The strategy

It is this part that the accused does not recognize. To do so, he wields his alleged transsexual status. He says that as a woman, his sexual attraction is to men. With this, the victim's family believes, he intends to avoid being accused of the sexual crime for which they ask him for 15 more years in prison. His defense asks that he be charged with homicide and not murder, because he maintains that the crime was an outburst and denies the sexual act. This is where, the family thinks, the sudden longing for a sex change is born.

Jonathan, during the trial in which he has asked to be called Lorena

"He never, ever said that he wanted to be a woman or anything like that. Not even that he was attracted to men; he never had relationships with men. He was always behind women and always related to them in a very complicated way, harassing them," he says. now Nayara, who grew up with both: "Jonathan's mother died in childbirth. He grew up with a biological aunt who adopted him and ended up giving him their last names. She became his mother and always passed everything on to him. We warned him all of Jonathan's behavior, but she never paid much attention to it."

Along with her physical complexes, she explains the complicated relationship she always had with women and especially with her cousin Vanessa: "She always apologized to him. Some other time he also tried to attack her. We had warned Vanessa, but she always It was unimportant. I loved him madly, "he says, recalling that" a couple of days before his death, she went with him for a walk and invited him to a sandwich. " Vanessa, 21 years old and a store clerk, became the person who gave understanding to the troubled Jonathan, a person with mild mental disorders.

Not serious enough, believes the prosecutor, to think that it was an outburst as the defense maintains. He believes that at all times she knew what he was doing and that this is proven by the fact that he was so prepared at Vanessa's house on the night of the car. "He sneaked in with some keys that he had previously stolen, that we were all looking for at home," recalls Nayara. She went into her cousin's room and hit her 30 times with a hammer. She then tried to eliminate the incriminating evidence.

at the wake

Jonathan returned home to sleep and acted normally the following days: "It took four days for Vanessa's disfigured body to be returned to us, which we could only accompany for four hours. Four days we were watching, at home, receiving condolences from the people And he too, of course. As part of the family that he was. Receiving condolences with all cold blood, "recalls Nayara, who insists that, at that time, "Jonathan was still Jonathan and not Lorena, nor had he given any clues of wanting to change sex.".

Jonathan didn't like the photos. This is one of the few that the family has

The family praises the work of the Civil Guard in the investigation, which determined Jonathan's authorship. And after his entry into prison, the sudden conversion into Lorena with which, the family believes, he intends to avoid part of the sentence. From the defense they argue that the change of sex is official, because they have recognized it even in prison, where she has been given different treatment since she declared herself a woman, allowing her to wear feminine clothes in private and shower apart from the other inmates. The accusation refutes explaining that this change of gender "is not the responsibility of Penitentiary Institutions, but of the Civil Registry."

Vanessa's family wants to make it clear that "we have nothing against the Trans Law, as we have read somewhere. On the contrary, we believe that it is very necessary in our society. We are in favor of it. What we are against is that Jonathan use for their own benefit, they are taking advantage of the trans problem to avoid assuming their responsibilities".

what does the law say

In this regard, article 14 of the draft of the Trans Law expressly indicates that "the rectification of the registration mention related to sex and, where appropriate, the change of name, will not alter the ownership of the legal rights and obligations that may correspond to the person prior to the registration of the registry change, in particular for the purposes of the provisions of Organic Law 1/2004, of December 28, on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence".

From the family, however, they point to the consequences given the possibility that the gender change would go ahead. Because he has not said it explicitly in the trial, but "her sex change could end up in a women's prison. Imagine what that would be like for the prisoners, who are real women. Forcing them to live with a confessed murderer of women".

vanessa santana

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