“Very young women, in a precarious economic situation, belonging to unstructured families or families residing in other provinces and who, therefore, were alone in Madrid, some with previous traumatic experiences, with hardly any professional or sexual experience and with the hope and dream of being actresses” whom Ramón Paso, a 48-year-old playwright, “captured” through the castings with an “objective” that responded “to another interest” than the theatrical one: “To access these young women to guarantee the satisfaction of their sexual desires through prevalence, violence, intimidation and/or abuse of trust as the case may be, turning them into objects of their sexual pleasure.” This is how the complaint by the Madrid Prosecutor’s Office against the stage director Ramón Paso – admitted for processing by a court and to which this newspaper has had access – relates the situation of violence to which he subjected at least 13 women “aged between 18 and 28 years of age during the years 2019 and until April 2023″, in addition to a case from 2014, and “a complaint that could not be ratified because the victim lived outside of Madrid, due to events that occurred when he was a minor old”.
This case became known last April, when the lawyer representing the complainants, Luisa Estévez Martínez, reported on the actions of the Public Ministry. A week later, on April 25, the Court of Instruction number 29 of Madrid opened proceedings for that complaint, which meant that it had already been assigned to a court during the distribution shift and is waiting for the magistrate studying the case decides what steps will be taken in a possible instruction. In those days, after becoming public, this newspaper learned of the story of more women, seven, who had asked Estévez to join the complaint.
The testimonies collected by EL PAÍS speak of a context of continued psychological violence, threats, humiliation and patterns of behavior that ranged from provoking confrontation between the company’s actresses to insistence on alcohol consumption on outings and rehearsals outside the room. , the same ones that appear in the facts described by the Public Ministry to explain how “taking advantage of his position” as director of the Paso-Azorín company, and “with the purpose of accessing certain women to deceive them and take sexual advantage of them,” he published Casting offers on the Solo Actores website with requirements that “were limited to being young, girlish-looking women, to play various roles in which the crazy, sexy, daring, mischievous or uninhibited character of the role generally stood out.” His objective was “to achieve sexual enjoyment of the young women, even if this meant destroying them psychologically and the end of their initial theatrical career.”
The Prosecutor’s Office speaks of “vaginal, anal and oral sexual relations, without having the free consent issued by the young women, who rejected sexual encounters, although sometimes they felt constrained to perform them, sometimes submitting to them without consenting to them, knowing the denounced his opposition or displeasure.” “On other occasions,” he adds, “he subjected them to violence and direct intimidation to achieve this. “To the point of causing one victim anal tears and another a vaginal infection.”
The facts of these crimes are widely described in the complaint. An “ever-present sexual context”; alcohol that “encouraged them to drink,” such as wine and shots of absinthe; calling the women in the company with whom he had had relations and “even with some of the victims” “bitches”; hug them, kiss them, put my hand “on their leg and on their crotch when they were watching rehearsals.” For some, “he even required them to go without underwear and carry their panties in their hands to hand them to him”; “He forced them to go to the gynecologist with someone the accused trusted” and some “had to take the morning after pill, because he imposed it, because he never used a condom.”
He made one record a video of herself masturbating while reciting a paper and asked her to send it to him. Another, who had told Paso that she had suffered sexual violence as a child, tried to distance herself from him and “demand professionalism”; He rewrote a scene for her character, “imposing her to act out a rape,” causing “great psychological damage of which Ramón was aware.”
And one more, who had also told him that her father “had sexually abused” her when she was a child, that she had not spoken to him for years and that she was going to therapy for it, had to face Paso looking for her father and inviting him to a performance, causing an encounter between the two just before entering the scene that caused the woman to suffer an anxiety attack. Step “took her to a corner and despite the state of shock “He began to kiss her, touch her on all parts of her body, including her genitals, without the actress being able to react.” Afterwards, she demanded that he go out and perform, according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
He also invited them to his house, where at first there were more people, but then, “at Ramón’s suggestion,” they disappeared, and one person, the one who lived in that house with Paso, “locked himself in his room.” When he was alone with the woman in question, she “held her hands, kissed her, touched her or had unwanted sexual relations and even with force or in a prior intimidating context.”
In general, he asked everyone to keep it “a secret.” And if someone did not want to give in to him, Paso’s tactics were just the opposite: “He excluded them from the rehearsals, he harmed them in other castings with other companies, he humiliated them and made fun of them in front of their colleagues with the aim of creating insecurity, emotional instability and sending them a very clear message: who was in charge and, if they wanted to achieve something in this artistic world, they had to submit to your wishes”.
A strategy that was repeated
The procedure was always the same. It began with interviews in which the central topic of the conversation was personal. “Economic situation, family and social support, personal ties in Madrid…, to later address questions of a sexual nature, a topic that was recurrent in all types of contexts, as well as in several of his works in which fellatio, rape and expressions and manifestation of sexual content, for example in Another twist and Kiss you, look at you and fuck you”.
In some of these meetings he asked the women what “they thought of sexual relations between a young woman and an elderly man like him; about pedophilia or who they would take to a desert island. In general, the accused felt offended if the person chosen was not him,” the complaint reads.
Once they entered the company, and despite having passed the casting, he told them that they were on a trial period and “he tricked them little by little.” For example, it includes the text of the Public Ministry, which assured them that their casting It had been the best he had seen and that “he would know how to get the best out of it” because it was “a diamond in the rough that he would know how to polish.” He also adds to the complaint that Paso made “his position of supremacy clear,” that he was “the teacher” and “he liked to be seen as a god, in addition to bragging about being a very influential person and having many contacts.” . He also made it clear that “he could destroy anyone’s professional career in a minute.”
In the day-to-day life of the company, his strategy was to isolate them from the rest, “inventing expressions, comments and hoaxes that the young women had never said about each other” and that he told them in private. That, the Prosecutor’s Office points out, created “an environment of mistrust” for those young women, who arrived “with no prior professional experience, giving credence to what he said.” Furthermore, Paso advised them “repeatedly” to only trust certain members of the company who had been working with him for many years and whom he referred to as “his group,” or told them that “they would be like “the sisters.” of the young actress, verbalizing the idea that her company was like a family.” His three partners in the company, Ana Azorín, Inés Kerzan and Ángela Peirat, publicly supported him after the allegations became known.
That isolation was not only internal, but also external. “He demanded a disposition for 24 hours, including weekends, in which they should demonstrate servility, devotion and submission,” he called them at any time, he summoned them on weekends so that they could not go to his house if they were from another place than was not Madrid, “he invited them to abandon their studies” and “their partners.”
For these young women, that company was “their first work experience in the theater and they thought that what they saw was normal and that such behaviors could respond to Ramón’s eccentricities.” These “eccentricities”, however, respond to facts that according to the Prosecutor’s Office “may have characteristics of various crimes of sexual assault, some of them in criminal continuity, several of sexual harassment and harassment, several against moral integrity, and coercion.” And, “in all”, with “the generic aggravating circumstance of discrimination based on gender.”
For all the victims, the complaint says, this has left them with “psychological damage, showing post-traumatic stress and high, moderate and mild levels of anxiety, which have required, in any case, psychological therapy.”
Telephone 016 assists victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. You can also contact via email [email protected] and by WhatsApp at the number 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, you can call 112 or the National Police telephone numbers (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you cannot call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
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