Ana Peleteiro denounces having been a victim of sexist and sexual violence: “If you identify yourself, please run away”

The Spanish athlete Ana Peleteiro, European champion and Olympic triple jump medalist, has publicly said that she was a victim of sexist violence by her ex-partner. The Galician has joined the trend ‘and even so I stayed’, which has gone viral on TikTok to bring to light sexist behaviors within the framework of relationships, to denounce what she experienced with the aim of helping others women. “If you identify with any of these signs, please run away. You are never going to come out happy and they are doing you a lot of harm,” he tells them.

The athlete has posted her testimony on the social network, lasting about five minutes, in which she narrates the violent and manipulative behavior that this man exercised against her, including sexual assaults: “He woke me up at night having sexual relations without consent and I still stayed,” he says. Peleteiro recounts the pressure he put him under. “He told me that if we didn’t have sex whenever he wanted, it would deteriorate the relationship, and that, in the end, anyone who didn’t eat at home ate out and if he was unfaithful to me I wouldn’t be surprised and I still stayed.”

The video is full of references to sexist attitudes and abuse present in the relationship. The Galician athlete says that she ended up isolating him from his closest environment and he managed to distance himself “from a lot of people” in addition to “changing absolutely everything about me: from my clothes, to my hair, to the way I act with my family.” “When we went to live together, he told me that the kitchen was mine alone, that he was not going to take care of anything that had to do with the housework and I still stayed,” continues the medalist, who also remembers that He “suddenly disappeared and I didn’t hear from him for the entire weekend” and during the Covid pandemic “he left me alone for four months.”

Peleteiro also narrates how, faced with suspicions of multiple infidelities, he made her feel guilty and told her “that she was completely crazy, that it was all in my head and I was going to end up breaking up the relationship because of my distrust.” Furthermore, “when he returned from his trips with hickeys on his neck, he told me that they were bug bites,” adds the Galician athlete, who discovered “that he had a double life, another relationship, and even so I stayed, I forgave him,” she laments. “She had new friends every month and she made up movies that they were friends from a thousand years ago and it was a lie. They were lovers. I didn’t know it at that time. Now yes,” he says.

The athlete also points out the attitudes that her ex-partner had towards other women, among others, how “she drove her ex-partner crazy and said that she was obsessed with him” when she discovered “hundreds of e-mails with her” among which “there were erased his own.” He also “received letters from his lovers at home” and Peleteiro told him “that they were crazy fans obsessed with him. And still I stayed,” she recalls, who leaves a final message to other girls: “Try to go to therapy because getting out of a relationship with a narcissist is very complicated because they reduce your self-esteem to minus 20, but with help and with the people around you who love you, you can go out, start from scratch and live a real, good and beautiful love,” he concludes.