The political parties have sealed at the end of September a State Pact against Gender Violence in Spain, a historic agreement that consists of 213 measures to eradicate one of the biggest blunders of our society in which Not only women are victims, but also their children.
Unfortunately, there are few cases that show system failures regarding child protection when women victims of sexist violence separate from their partners. Many women fear for them and for their children, they feel helpless and invisible before a justice that seems to make deaf ears.
Children are also victims of violence
Battered women are direct victims of sexist violence, but there are also other victims who are too often excluded without any reason and are not given a voice: the minors.
Within the framework of the Law on Children and Adolescents, Organic Law 8/2015 that entered into force in 2015 considers the minors exposed to gender violence as direct victims, declaring them subjects of the protection that the law provides to their mothers. But knowing cases like the ones we will tell you next, the reality is that In practice, much remains to be done.
The lawyer María Naredo considers that "justice usually prioritizes the right of parents over that of minors, which remains an untouchable right even if children are at risk. The system must be able to prove the damage that this man has caused to the woman and the minors and, from there, decide ".
Some scary facts:
According to the 2015 Violence Against Women Macro-Survey, 63.6% of women that they suffer sexist violence ensures that their sons and daughters have witnessed some situation of abuse. Of them, in 64.2% of cases children also suffer.
So far in 2017, 37 women have died (plus three in research) and 6 children because of sexist violence. In 2016, 44 female victims and one minor were registered. And far from improving, it is a scourge that worsens. At this step, the cases will have increased compared to last year.
Macho violence has left 169 children in orphanage since 2013, year since registration.
According to Save the Children, in 71% of cases of minor children killed by their parents there is no prior complaint.
In the first person: an eight-year struggle
Babies and more has contacted a victim of gender violence (whom we will call H. to preserve his anonymity) and mother of two teenage children, also victims, who tells us your case in the first person.
"Actually the abuse was always there, but it left no mark. Jokes that cease to be jokes, pushes, threats, humiliations ..." The nightmare was triggered when she decided that she wanted to divorce and told her husband, who reacted very badly. He told her that in no way, that he could not leave, and that if he left he would stay with the children, then six and almost eleven. The situation became very tense.
"Until a day comes when it hits me. The children are there. You do not know how to escape. The children, as small as they were, call the police. The police show up and take it away. There begins another phase. Phase that completely changes the landscape. It becomes a fight that still continues in court since 2011. You start to get into a justice that you don't understand, that gives anger, that frustrates, with a false protection towards minors".
"It is a great physical, emotional and economic wear. You feel helpless. Justice does not combine all the complaints that exist to protect children."Social services intervened, they referred the children to the Mira Program, a program for the care of women and children in domestic violence, they were evaluated and they decided they needed treatment. But "the father opposed and requested to interrupt the treatment of the children"says the mother.
Regarding this, experts warn that the abusive parents should be stopped asking for authorization for children to be psychologically treated. This is a legal requirement in application of parental rights, which also affects those cases in which the father has been convicted or there is an order of protection.
The children also suffered physical abuse from the father, in addition to suffering the emotional consequences of a situation that has been going on for eight years.
"It's a concept problem, they treat it like a normal divorce. Far from feeling support, it makes you more desperate. There is no protection whatsoever."
The Juana Rivas Case: escape from Justice for her children
The Juana Rivas Case has penetrated very deeply into a society sensitized to gender violence. Almost no one has remained indifferent to the story of the mother of Granada who disobeyed Justice to avoid giving his children to his ex-husband, sentenced in 2009 to three months in prison and a year away from a crime of injuries in the family.
Beyond the controversy created in this particular case, both in favor of the mother supporting her decision to protect the children and against, attacking her for disobeying justice, it is clear that there is still a long way to go to guarantee the rights of all parties, and especially those of minors.
The case of Ángela González Carreño: an avoidable tragedy
Another case, which has been sounded by the lack of protection it has had on the part of the institutions and which led to an avoidable tragedy, is that of Angela Carreño. Since she separated from her husband in 1999, nobody took the necessary measures to prevent the murder of his daughter.
Ángela González Carreño ran away from home with her three-year-old daughter Andrea, due to the episodes of abuse she suffered. After that he filed for divorce, and in 2003 the girl was killed by her abusive father when she was seven, during an unguarded visit.
Despite the more than fifty-one complaints that brought in the courts, and request protection measures for both "A man (referring to the judge) decided, as if it were a toy, that the visitation regime had to be opened in the interest of the father, a father who took the opportunity to kill his daughter", Angela says in an interview in El Mundo.
With the immense pain for the loss of his daughter and after eleven years of lawsuits, in 2014 the UN condemned Spain for not acting diligently by not protecting her or her daughter, not punishing the abuser and not investigating or compensating the woman for the damages caused.
The lawsuit before the UN was filed in 2012 by the Women's Link Worldwide organization, with which we have spoken to ask:
What steps should our country take so that things change and a case like this is not repeated?
Follow the measures of the CEDAW Committee (United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women). This Committee has dictated three fundamental recommendations In the case of Ángela Carreño:
1) That the a history of gender violence is considered mandatory when deciding on custody and visitation rights.
2) That the compulsory training on gender violence and gender stereotypes, on the CEDAW Convention and its Optional Protocol, as well as on the general recommendations of the CEDAW Committee and, in particular, on General Recommendation no. 19.
3) In addition, the Spanish State should reinforce the regulatory framework establishing a duty of due diligence when responding to situations of gender violence.
"I am not afraid," the words of a daughter
'I'm not afraid anymore' is an autobiographical book written by Patricia Fernández Montero, an 18-year-old girl who knows firsthand what it is to suffer sexist violence at home for years.
Since he was six years old he lived every day a situation that no child should live: she was forced by Justice to live with an abusive father. He does not call him a father, but a "parent", because "he who mistreats his son is never a father, is an abuser," he says.
His book is made "by and for children" who suffer daily abuse.
Can you imagine waking up and nothing is the same? That your whole world has changed, forever? This is the story, my story, the voice silenced for years, the cry in the void that I tried to launch, the dull fear of panic and, today, sees the light. I share this story with that of hundreds of children and people who have lived and live under the agonizing pain of gender violence. This is a cry to hope and a claim to society. The vertigo of threats and the tearing of pain. The true face of which nobody counts or wants to hear, because sometimes it is too scary.
