Buenos Aires, Dec 9 (NA) – Silvana Russi, acting head of the National Prosecutor's Office No. 43 for Criminal and Correctional Matters, requested that businessman Leandro Esteban García Gómez, the ex-boyfriend of singer Lourdes Fernández, be brought to oral trial for various episodes of gender-based violence that occurred between January and October of this year, as confirmed by sources in the case to the Argentine News Agency.
In the document sent to Judge Diego Slupski, the representative of the Public Prosecutor's Office requested that the 46-year-old businessman be tried as the author of the crimes of: minor aggravated injuries due to the relationship and by virtue of gender-based violence; illegal deprivation of liberty aggravated by having been committed against a person to whom particular respect is due and by virtue of violence and coercion; and repeated coercive threats on three occasions.
On October 23 of this year, García Gómez was arrested in his apartment in the Palermo neighborhood of Buenos Aires for having held the artist captive for days.
Photo: Agencia NA (Police)
After several attempts to raid the apartment, it was only on the night of that Thursday that the City Police managed to enter the apartment. There, in a state of extreme vulnerability, the agents found the singer from the group Bandana, and her ex-partner was immediately arrested.
Fernández was found «sitting on the matrimonial bed in one of the bedrooms with signs of drowsiness and visible state of vulnerability» and the accused was found hiding in a closet.
«Leandro Esteban García Gómez and Cecilia Lourdes Fernández maintained a conflicting and intermittent relationship from early 2020 until October 2025, which was marked by a sustained context of long-standing gender-based violence that was consolidated through various forms of physical and psychological aggression, repeated behaviors of emotional manipulation, harassment, control and by the progressive isolation of the victim from her family and emotional environment,» the prosecutor described.
Since November 4, the businessman has been prosecuted with preventive detention and now, according to what NA learned, before the holidays, Judge Slupski could respond to the request to elevate the case to trial.
Operation in the businessman's apartment. Photo: Agencia NA
During the investigation, the victim was evaluated by professionals from the Office of Domestic Violence (OVD) of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation, and in the report they revealed that «indicators (...) of a subjective perception of deficient risk, linked to the normalization of the violence (...)» were observed.
The professionals, according to what was reported by the Fiscales portal, concluded that the problem she is immersed in is a case of «relational entrapment crossed by a situation of long-standing gender-based violence that would currently be invisibilized by the interviewee».
In turn, they valued her situation as «high risk», among other reasons, due to «the hyperadaptation», «the scarce registration of the situations experienced» and «the characteristics attributed to the accused person».
The complaint had been filed by Fernández's mother, who stated she had no contact with her daughter.
