Victoria Eugenia Henao: Woman claims Pablo Escobar had her have an abortion after getting her pregnant at 14
A woman has claimed that Pablo Escobar married her and got her pregnant when she was just 14 years old. The woman, Victoria Eugenia Henao, recalled marrying Escobar at a Colombian church in a secret ceremony. The young bride was sporting green polyester trousers and an orange jumper when marrying Escobar, who was 11 years older than her. Escobar and Henao were married for around 17 years, and she endured numerous affairs, the murder of one of his mistresses, as well the constant fear of his many enemies, the woman claims. Henao broke her silence last year and revealed what her life was like being married to one of the world's biggest drug lords.
In her book 'Mrs. Escobar: My Life With Pablo', she spoke how Escobar forced her to have an abortion at the age of 14, and how she went into labor with her first child while at school. She also revealed that he would hide cameras in their house to spy on women in the bathroom. Henao had first laid eyes on Escobar when she was growing up in a well-respected middle-class family close to Medellin. Escobar, 23 was showing off his Vespa scooter and would shower her with gifts. He would also make her feel like a "fairy princess".
At the age of 14, which is the legal age of consent in Colombia, the two had sex for the first time. In her book she has written, "I wasn’t ready. I didn’t yet feel sexual desire. I lacked the tools to understand what that intense, intimate contact meant."
Three weeks after this, she said she started to feel "strange" after which a suspicious Escobar took her to a house in the suburbs where a woman instructed her to lie down. She then inserted many tubes into her uterus and told Henao to remove it when she started bleeding. For a few days after, Henao lay in bed in immense pain and bleeding profusely, which she later understood was an abortion. Even though she was facing the abuse, she remained totally infatuated by Escobar and defied her parents. She ran away and married him.
The pair secretly got married in Palmira after which Escobar carried her to a room to consummate the marriage. "It was a night of unforgettable love that remains tattooed on my skin as one of the happiest moments of my life. I wanted time to stand still, for the intimacy we were enjoying to last for ever," she said.
After her wedding, she continued to study and would do the cleaning and laundry in between. Within weeks of the wedding, she was pregnant again. One morning, she noticed that she was going into labor but struggled into school as she had an English test and didnt want to get bad marks. Post the test, she felt her waters break and walked two blocks to her parent's home, managing to make it to the hospital just half an hour before the couple's son Juan Pablo was born. Seven years later, the couple went on to have a daughter, Manuela, together.
After getting married, Escobar started to spend long periods away from home on "business". "In those first years, I never thought that his activities were particularly dangerous or wrong. They simply weren’t a topic of conversation. In my world people didn’t talk about drugs, definitely not cocaine, and much less the Medellín Cartel," she said.
However, she was well aware of his affairs with his many mistresses. In the book, she wrote, "The gossip about his affairs was constant and, I must admit, deeply painful for me. I remember I used to cry all night, waiting for dawn to come."
"I decided not to follow him, track his phone calls, or check his shirts for lipstick. He who seeks shall find - and I preferred not to find anything," she wrote.
She also spoke about their luxury home in the Antioquia region which had a huge house and stables. He was also living a double life while there. "To meet with his lovers, Pablo had the nerve to build an apartment camouflaged behind the stables, very close to the main house," she said. "He also built several cabins in more remote areas, which they used to escape to, even when we were there," she continued.
Escobar died in 1993 in Medellin, Colombia after being hunted down by the authorities.