The Court of Violence against Women number 2 of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria will investigate in its criminal aspect an alleged child abduction, supposedly committed by a man separated from his wife. Allegedly, the man, violating the custody and visitation arrangements established by court order, took the minor daughter born to the couple from the Canary Islands to the mainland, kept her with him in Malaga for five months, and did not return her until ordered to do so by the Justice system.
The judicial authority understands that it could have been an act of vicarious violence, that is, an action to harm their ex-partner through a third person.
The judicial body notified in recent days the order accepting jurisdiction to hear the case (initially, the complaint about the alleged abduction had been sent to the ordinary investigating court) and imposes a precautionary measure of restraining and prohibiting communication with his daughter, who was eight years old when the alleged abduction occurred, for the duration of the investigation.
The man is not only being investigated for this alleged crime, classified under Article 225 bis of the Penal Code; he is also accused of a crime of habitual mistreatment as provided for in Article 173.2, "without prejudice to a subsequent reclassification".
In this case, the judicial authority's decision to assume jurisdiction over a crime such as child abduction – which in principle is not specifically listed as falling under the jurisdiction of the Courts for Violence Against Women – has been supported by the favorable opinion of the Public Prosecutor's OfficeThe magistrate recalls in the ruling that the novel assumption of jurisdiction "is supported by the Consultation of the State Attorney General's Office 4/2025, where it establishes that child abduction falls under the jurisdiction of the Gender Violence courts when it occurs with an act of gender-based violence.""In this case," she emphasizes, "two criminal offenses concur, habitual mistreatment and child abduction, so the jurisdiction is evident." "But I would go a step further," details the presiding judge of the Court, "since I consider that the crime of child abduction falls under the jurisdiction of violence courts when it is used as a tool to harm the mother (...) It is easily understood that any of the actions included in Article 225 of the Penal Code constitutes, in itself, an act of violence or intimidation towards the woman, when the instrumentalization of children and adolescents is proven, so there would be no doubt about the assumption of jurisdiction by these types of specialized courts."
It details that on April 20, the now investigated, "without the consent of the victim and without a court order allowing him to assume exclusive custody of his minor daughter, did not return her to her place of residence (Las Palmas), but rather kept her in Malaga with him and his new partner, for a period of five months".
On October 10, 2025, the resolution continues, by court order "the minor was returned to her mother."
The brief lists a litany of alleged "harassment and coercion" supposedly carried out by the investigated party against his ex-partner (including, among other things, attributing to him the authorship of injuries to the child that had occurred in an accident at school while she was playing sports) and concludes by asserting that the legal classification of the facts would be "a crime of habitual mistreatment and a crime of child abduction, with the continued acts of harassment and coercion initially classified being subsumed within said crime of habitual mistreatment."
"Being in any case before two different legal goods, so that the crime of child abduction cannot be subsumed within the scope of habitual mistreatment, but rather it would be, in its case, a real concurrence of crimes."