An Argentine soccer player who threatened his ex-partner's family with a gun was sentenced to five years in prison.

The Argentine soccer player Óscar Junior Benítez, 31, was sentenced this Tuesday to five years in prison for threatening his ex-partner's family with a firearm. The former Lanús and Boca Juniors player, who also had a career in Mexico and Ecuador, had been denounced by the parents and brother of Anabelia Ayala, a woman with whom he had had a relationship parallel to his marriage for years and who committed suicide. at the end of last year. Justice is also investigating Benítez as the alleged instigator of the death of the woman, whose parents had filed a restraining order against the soccer player after several episodes of threats with weapons that began in 2021.

Anabelia Ayala, who died at the age of 29, met Junior Benítez through social networks in 2017. The footballer had just won the local tournament with Boca Juniors, and would play for just a handful of games in another team in the Argentine professional league before migrating. for two years to soccer in Mexico and Ecuador. Benítez was married to his teenage girlfriend and already had four children, but he invited the young woman to spend time with him during both trips. The Ayala family reports that then the episodes of violence began: the young woman traveled to meet him and he paid for hotels and apartments, but later – according to the family – the soccer player began by taking her phone and passport to prevent her from leaving and He ended up hitting her.

The relationship continued while the footballer returned to Argentina in 2021, and that year the threats to the family began. According to the trial that was resolved this Tuesday, Benítez entered the young woman's parents' house without permission, destroyed a computer and her other possessions, and threatened to kill his ex-father-in-law and his ex-brother-in-law with a gun. of fire of which he had no legal possession. Benítez had been arrested in May 2023 while the Justice Department was investigating these threats, but he served his deprivation of liberty in house arrest. The family denounces that even with a restraining order, the soccer player continued to control his daughter, who was found dead in her room on New Year's Eve 2023. The cause of her death was stated as asphyxiation, but Ayala's parents They report that the young woman was harassed by the soccer player, who forced her to keep in contact with him through video calls. Days later, while awaiting the start of the trial that convicted him this Tuesday, Benítez was arrested for violating his house arrest and the restraining order that kept him away from his ex-partner's house. According to the Ayalas, the soccer player had stopped by his house the day before his daughter's suicide. Benítez, who will serve a five-year sentence for criminal damage, threats and illegal possession of a firearm, has since awaited trial in prison.

Benítez, who is still waiting for the resolution of the case for the alleged instigation of the suicide of Anabelia Ayala, is the first convicted in a season where several complaints against Argentine footballers for sexist violence have once again been uncovered. Four Vélez Sársfield players are awaiting the resolution of another trial against them for the abuse of a young woman in a hotel in the province of Tucumán, in the north of the country. Two other players, youth players from the Mendoza team Godoy Cruz, were separated due to a complaint for rape in mid-March and two players from the 2022 world champion team, Thiago Almada and Gonzalo Montiel, are also awaiting judicial resolution of complaints against them.

“My daughter was threatened to continue with the relationship. If she left him, he would kill us,” Anabelia's father, Juan Carlos Ayala, denounced during the trial, according to local media. Ayala, who heard the sentence this Tuesday in a court in the province of Buenos Aires, said that the soccer player had distanced the young woman from her friends, that he had isolated her from her family and that he “controlled her with a tablet 24 hours a day.” ”. “It was complicated because my daughter was 29 years old, she was an older person, and she didn't want me to get involved. But this boy violated my home, he entered several times at dawn, with a revolver, he started a war with me,” the father told a television channel. “My daughter is not going to receive justice, I am not going to receive justice, but it is important that women who suffer violence see that they can report it and a solution can be found.”

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