A psychology professor is insisting that she’s not the cold, calculating murderess that prosecutors have made her out to be.

Instead, 39-year-old Norma Patricia Esparza is claiming she’s the victim—and that she fell prey to the abusive whims of the men in her life.

COURTESY THE SANTA ANA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Gianni Van, 43, was arrested in Costa Mesa and was charged with murder and conspiracy.

Esparza says she was raped in her college dorm room in 1995 by Gonzalo Ramirez, a stranger she had met during a night out on in Santa Ana. Gianni Van, a boyfriend that she had just started dating, was furious when he heard about the rape and blamed her for not stopping the attack. Esparza claims Van hatched a plot to brutally hurt Ramirez.

The 39-year-old mother is now accused of joining a group that kidnapped Ramirez and hacked him to death with a meat cleaver on April 16, 1995.

COURTESY THE SANTA ANA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Gonzalo Dominguez Ramirez, 24, of Riverside, was beaten and stabbed multiple times in April 1995. His body was dumped near the San Diego Freeway.

Esparza said that she was never a willing participant in the crime. Instead, she told Today that she was “dragged, pressured, bullied, intimidated” by Van during that one hellish night.

“It just hurts me so much that I had been raped, and here he [Van]is, instead of consoling me, he destroyed the rest of my life, ” she said. "You know, the abuse was difficult, the rape was difficult, but dragging me through that night, it haunts me."

Bruce Chambers/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Norma Patricia Esparza, an accused murderer, refused to take a plea deal for a 1995 crime she claims she didn't commit.

Esparza claims that Van then forced her into a marriage to keep her silent, since married people cannot be compelled to testify against their spouses.

She said she had been sexually molested by her father when she was a child, an experience that encouraged her to submit to men in order to survive.

Bruce Chambers/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Norma Patricia Esparza later married renowned medical researcher Jorge Mancillas. They have a four-year-old daughter together.

The woman eventually divorced Van and went on to pursue a career as a psychologist. She has a daughter with husband Jorge Mancillas, a successful medical researcher in Geneva.

Esparza’s past caught up with her when police began to question her again about Ramirez’s unsolved murder mystery. She cooperated for some time before prosecutors turned around and slammed her with a charge of manslaughter while she was in Boston for conference in 2012.

Bruce Chambers/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Norma Patricia Esparza has worked for the World Health Organization in Geneva. She was then hired as a psychology professor at Webster Univeristy in Geneva.

The psychologist’s supporters have started a change.org petition asking Orange County prosecutors to drop the charges. It has amassed nearly 5,000 signatures.

RELATED: EUROPEAN PROFESSOR FACES TRIAL IN HER RAPIST’S SLAYING

Bruce Chambers/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Norma Patricia Esparza hugs her 4-year-old daughter, Arianna, during a news conference in Santa Ana, Calif.

But the District Attorney’s spokeswoman, Susan Kang Schroeder, said that Esparza is just using reverse psychology to sway the public to her side.

“She’s a very sophisticated defendant,” Schroeder told Pasadena Star News. “She has a Ph.D in psychology and she knows how to play on people’s emotions, including the use of her 4-year-old daughter as a prop at the press conference. This is a woman who is trying to act like the victim in this case when the real victim was brutally murdered and the case went unsolved for 20 years.”

COURTESY THE SANTA ANA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Kody Tran was also a suspect in the case, but killed himself on July 12, 2012 of in his Irvine home during a standoff with police as he was being investigated in connection with the Ramirez slaying.

The suspects in the case are Esparaza, the 44-year-old Van, 42-year-old Shannon Ray “Jailbird” Gries, and 45-year-old Diane Tran, who owns the auto repair shop where Ramirez was attacked. Tran’s husband was a fifth suspect, but was killed in a police shootout last year.

All four suspects have pleaded not guilty.

COURTESY THE SANTA ANA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Diane Tran, 44, was arrested in Irvine and was charged with murder and conspiracy.

Esparza said she was taken to the scene by the others in the group. But she says she never saw Ramirez being killed.

She only caught a glimpse of the tortue.

COURTESY THE SANTA ANA POLICE DEPARTMENT

Shannon Ray Gries, 41, allegedly one of the assailants who abducted Ramirez, according to the complaint, is listed as a fugitive.

“He looked up. He was moving. He had blood on his torso,” she recalled to the Pasadena Star News. “He said, ‘I don’t know you little girl.’

“I just screamed and ran down the stairs,” she continued. “I thought, ‘Why did they bring me here? Oh my goodness am I going to be killed? Why did they force me to see this guy?’ And, at the point I realized this was meant to be a punishment for me.”

TODAY.com

Norma Patricia Esparza was arrested in October 2012 on a murder warrant in Massachusetts. She was extradited and booked into Orange County Jail.

Esparza was offered a plea deal if she confessed to manslaughter and accepted a three-year jail sentence. But the woman rejected the bargain and now faces life in prison.

“I’ve been victimized a number of times in my life and now I’m being victimized as a way for a prosecutor to build a career,” Esparza said.

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