Missing Moroccan woman staggers into Spanish clinic, says she was held and raped for 22 months

A 38 year old Moroccan woman who disappeared in Spain in April 2024 reached help in Murcia on February 10 after escaping what she told police was 22 months of illegal confinement and repeated sexual and physical abuse in a house on the huerta outskirts of the city, according to Spanish media reports and court accounts.

Her family reported her missing on 1 April 2024 after contact stopped abruptly, and the case remained unresolved until she reappeared almost two years later, El País reported.

Spanish outlets say she exploited a lapse in her captor’s control, left the property in San José de la Vega and covered several kilometres on foot before reaching medical help.

One of the first people to see her, a 69 year old man identified as Juan, told El País she arrived in shock and begged him not to leave her. “I do not know where to go, I have no one in Murcia. Do not abandon me. You are my angel,” she told him, according to his account. He described her as “terrified” and said, “It is not about believing her. You only have to see her.”

Hospital and court reporting describe injuries consistent with sustained violence, including head wounds and serious trauma to one eye. La Sexta, citing her account to La Opinión de Murcia, quoted her saying her captor damaged her eye with an iron bar.

Police arrested a Spanish man in his 50s, identified in El País reporting as Alberto S. M., and the case is being handled as illegal detention, sexual assault and gender violence.

A judge in Murcia ordered pretrial detention without bail, citing the seriousness of the alleged crimes and risks of flight, reoffending and destruction of evidence, according to El País and Cadena SER Radio Murcia.

Investigators also searched the house and recovered weapons and drugs, Spanish outlets reported, and police detained other people linked to the suspect on suspicion of concealment, with some later released while remaining under investigation.

El País reconstructed the early months of the case around a familiar missing person problem in Spain: a disappearance report filed by relatives that did not produce a quick location or an arrest, followed by a sharp pivot once the victim herself reached a clinic and triggered police protocols.

Spain’s interior ministry annual reporting shows thousands of disappearance reports are filed each year, with many resolved quickly and a smaller share turning into long running cases.

The case has also reopened a broader pattern that Spanish institutions track through separate systems: violence against women that goes unreported for long periods, and victims who only reach the state after an emergency.

Spain’s national statistics office reported 34,684 women were recorded as victims of gender violence in 2024, a figure based on police and court records.