As ARAGÓN DIGITAL has learned, on February 2 the judge of Courtroom No. 7 of the Investigative Section of the Zaragoza Court of Instance ordered the opening of oral proceedings for an alleged offense of family abandonment, after prosecutors filed charges against E. F. C. M., who was born in the Dominican Republic and is a Spanish national. The accused is currently free on bail and categorically denies leaving her daughter without adult supervision that night.
According to the prosecutor's account, the woman decided the day before the alleged incident not to take the child to school and, during the following early morning, left the apartment where she lived, located on Madrid Avenue in the Delicias neighborhood, to go to a venue on Monpeón Motos Street. There, she allegedly met several young women with whom she drank alcohol and, at around 3:30 a.m., invited them to continue the party at her home. She had previously told them that she lived alone.
The situation changed when the guests discovered that there was a young child in the apartment. Two of the women later testified before the judge that the girl said she was “hungry and cold,” and one of them recounted that she even “made her a cup of ColaCao and a French omelet.” They also said they found no other adult in the home and decided to call the National Police because they “believed the mother was not in a condition to care for the child,” according to the initial police report. One of the witnesses added before the court that the accused “appeared annoyed while they were looking after her daughter and only wanted to continue partying.”
A HOME WITH ACCESSIBLE KNIVES, CIGARETTE BUTTS AND BEER BOTTLES
The officers who went to the home recorded in their report that they found the rooms “untidy, with dirt on the floors and walls, damaged furniture, and cleaning products and knives within the child's reach.” They also noted “dirty mattresses and a living-room table with beer bottles and cigarette butts.” The five photographs added to the proceedings show, among other things, clothes and objects piled up in a room, a detached kitchen cabinet and several bottles on the living-room table.
The accused, represented by lawyer Carmen Sánchez Herrero, has maintained a different account from the outset. In her police statement, she said that her daughter “was not alone but in the care of a friend.” The man later appeared as a defense witness and told the judge that he had been staying at the home since January 29 and that, on the night in question, he “stayed with the girl while her mother went out.” According to his account, the woman “returned at around 3:00 a.m. accompanied by several people, and he subsequently left the apartment,” convinced that the child was then in her mother's care. He also said he had never seen the girl neglected and described the defendant as a “good mother.”
However, the prosecution's case differs from this account and insists that the girl had been left alone and that this conduct amounted to a breach of the duties inherent in parental authority. Prosecutors also recall that the family had already been the subject of a case opened by the Delicias municipal Social Services in 2022 and that, in February 2023, the child had been declared at risk and included in a family-preservation program.
The police intervention that night had immediate consequences, and the woman was arrested on January 31, 2025. The Government of Aragon provisionally assumed custody of the girl, who was placed in emergency foster care. A report subsequently submitted by the Aragonese Institute of Social Services (IASS) states that public guardianship became permanent in June of that same year and that, following different foster-care arrangements, a decision was made in September to move from a program aimed at family reunification to one involving definitive separation and delegated custody for adoption purposes. Last December, the child was accepted by a family proposed to begin that process.
In any event, the Zaragoza Provincial Prosecutor's Office considers the woman the perpetrator of an offense of family abandonment and is seeking nine months in prison, as well as disqualification from standing for elected office during the sentence and a six-year ban on exercising parental authority. The oral trial will now have to resolve one of the central issues that has divided the accounts throughout the investigation: whether the girl really remained alone while her mother was away or whether, as the defense maintains, she was in the care of the man who later testified before the court.
