*Warning: this episode contains descriptions of emotional abuse and manipulation* --- November 12, 2018, Madrid, Spain. 47-year-old Galician man Rodrigo Nogueira Iglesias is arrested near the Puerta de Atocha railway station. His crimes stretched back more than twenty years. Rodrigo frequented social media platforms and dating websites where he used fake profiles, pretending to be different people with different names and professions, all with the initial goal of attracting the attention of women who could be potential victims....
*Warning: this episode contains descriptions of emotional abuse and manipulation*
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November 12, 2018, Madrid, Spain. 47-year-old Galician man Rodrigo Nogueira Iglesias is arrested near the Puerta de Atocha railway station. His crimes stretched back more than twenty years. Rodrigo frequented social media platforms and dating websites where he used fake profiles, pretending to be different people with different names and professions, all with the initial goal of attracting the attention of women who could be potential victims.
We are joined by Dr Sheila Queralt – a friend of the Institute and Spain’s top forensic linguistics expert, having consulted on some 300 cases over the past 15 years and testified as a linguistics expert witness in criminal and civil trials across 10 countries, with cases reaching courts including the ECHR. Her work in forensic linguistics at ForensicLab continues through her Laboratory based in Barcelona, which provides linguisticanalysis of recorded conversations and voice messages, as well as written documents.
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In the episode, we make references to episodes 1.4 Romance Fraud, featuring a conversation with Dr Lis Carter, and 3.2 The Multiple Personas of an Online Child Abuser, featuring DrEmily Chiang.
Have a question for Nicci or Tim? Email us at writingwrongs@aston.ac.uk and we may answer it during an upcoming episode!
Check out the official AIFL blog for more forensic linguistic goodies here:
https://medium.com/@AIFLblog
If you have been affected by any of the themes in this week’s episode, please contact one of these free sources:
https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help/contact-samaritan/
https://www.helpguide.org/find-help
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Production Team: Angela Walker, Jordan Robertson, Neus Alberich Buera, Karolina Placzynta
Sound: James Cresswell
Visual design: George Grant
Editing: Angela Walker
Additional voices: Salvador Alberich Castelló
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Illustration by Víctor Gomollón García. Reproduced with the illustrator's kind permission. The illustration was originally created for the book Estafas amorosas by Sheila Queralt Estévez (Larousse Editorial, 2022).
More information about the book:
https://www.larousse.es/libro/libros-ilustrados-practicos/estafas-amorosas-sheila-queralt-estevez-9788419250179/
Español
Ilustración de Víctor Gomollón García. Reproducida con la amable autorización del ilustrador. La ilustración fue creada originalmente para el libro Estafas amorosas, de Sheila Queralt Estévez (Larousse Editorial, 2022).
Más información sobre el libro:
https://www.larousse.es/libro/libros-ilustrados-practicos/estafas-amorosas-sheila-queralt-estevez-9788419250179/
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Professor Tim Grant’s home page: Tim Grant- Aston Research Explorer
Dr Nicci MacLeod’s home page: NicciMacLeod - Aston Research Explorer
Dr Sheila Queralt’s home page: SQ-Lingüistas Forenses
Decalogue for requesting a linguistics expert report by Sheila Queralt
News of the Nogueira Iglesias case in the Spanish press
A guide to spotting romance fraudsters
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Academic sources
Carter, E.(2024). The Language of Romance crimes: Interactions of love, money, and threat. Cambridge University Press.
Chatten, A., Baxter, K., Mas, E., Pena, J., Tabachnick, G., Duncan, D., & MacKenzie, L. (2024). “I’ve Always Spoke Like This, You See”: Preterite-to-Participle Leveling in American and British Englishes. American Speech: A Quarterly of Linguistic Usage, 99(1), 3-46.
Queralt, S. (2022). Linguistic Profiling: A Spanish Case Study. Methodologies and Challenges in Forensic Linguistic Casework, 44–62.
