“I felt very alone, I thought that once I reported my attacker things would change… but no, everything turns into hell,” explains Cristina (not her fictitious name), 11 months after denouncing the father of her children after years of abuse and psychological manipulation. Like her, 12 other women victims of sexist violence attended by the Specialized Intervention Service (SIE) of Gironès, which depends on the Generalitat, have publicly denounced the ordeal that begins after saying enough is enough. And they have done so by pointing out judges, police officers and even doctors in a self-published fanzine with their stories. “It’s hard to imagine what comes next. Nobody prepares you and you manage it as best you can: the most likely thing is that you will sink deeper,” says another victim. Despite the incontestable progress, the objective of the project is to make visible the institutional violence in order to eradicate it.
Cristina now lives away from her attacker. She did not report him when she asked him to divorce her and he started to break doors and even walls of the house they had bought together. He didn’t do it either when he stood in front of her house at night to control her, nor when he moved into an adjacent home and began to threaten her second partner. He only took the case to the Mossos when he attacked their daughter. “He did it to hurt me.” “I thought that there would be a quick trial, that they would give me custody of the children and the matter would be over. But no.” That was when an ordeal of crossed resolutions began that have prolonged the judicial response and have even complicated the schooling of children. As a result, she has suffered anxiety attacks. “It’s been hell.”
“The prosecutor called me a long-suffering mother”
Cristina’s case is not the only one. In this ‘fanzine’, edited by SIE Girones under the title ‘After saying prou: experiences of institutional mascist violence‘, 13 women treated report similar cases. A mother of two children, ages 3 and 6, bursts out: “It’s frustrating to see yourself like this when you’re just trying to protect your children.” The children’s father is convicted of abuse, has an active restraining order against her mother and, according to the woman, has failed to comply with the visitation regime and communication between her and her children up to 50 times. “I asked for guardianship and custody and they denied it. The prosecutor said that I am a suffering mother.”
“This is not living, it is reporting for nothing, it is wasting time and money, and I suffer anxiety thinking that I am leaving my daughter with the devil”
“My daughter is very afraid at night because her father screams and insults her to hurt me,” says another mother of a 6-year-old girl who also reported her attacker. “This is not living, it is reporting for nothing, it is wasting time and money, and living disturbed for life, I suffer anxiety thinking that I left my daughter with the devil“. “I have won all the trials, I have had four restraining orders. He has never been imprisoned and his visitation regime has never been withdrawn,” says another woman whose ex-partner kidnapped her daughter.
“The judge mocked me in my face”
In addition to the effects that all this has on children, other victims denounce the absolute lack of empathy and protection of the judicial establishment. “When I decided to ask for justice I was raped seven times or more: the judicial system sneered in my face telling me that I was saying things that made no sense and put me on the bench as if I had been the criminal. “Could there be worse torture?” says the victim of sexual assault.
“In my case, the real abuser was the court”
“I report that my ex chased me with the car in the wrong direction but the judge is only interested in the bruise on the head,” complains another woman who is still scared. “He ensures that I cannot have a partner because he threatens them, once he told them that he would shoot them in the temple,” adds this woman, who found out that the judge was withdrawing a restraining order eight days after finding out. her aggressor. “He the real abuser is the court“.
These 13 women also point to the lack of understanding of Mossos d’Esquadra agents. “If I say that he grabbed my hair and slammed my head against the glass repeatedly, they can’t write in the report that there was a struggle.” “It’s not that you contradict yourself, it’s that you can’t express… I assumed that my role was to be a punching bag,” explains another woman who overcame fear and filed a complaint when her ex-husband kicked the door of her house. , grabbed her wrist and managed to escape by defending herself with a slap. “I did what I could because he previously threatened to break my face.”
“When I reported it, the agents laughed, even a police officer said that my ex had every right to break things because they were his”
“Laughter” from the Mossos
He says that while he was denouncing the violence suffered, the agents laughed. “The police told me that my ex had every right to break things because they were his.” When she explained to them how she got rid of him, the story becomes cruelly surreal. “They told me that the first one who was going to go to the cell was me, because she had admitted to an assault.” “In the end I didn’t report it. I felt ridiculous, alone, with total mistrust.” She ended up at a friend’s house, although the ex’s harassment did not end. “I never notified it. For what? So that they laugh at me again?” However, she receives psychological care at the SIE. “Now at least I can identify that I experienced psychological and sexual abuse.”
“After being attacked with chemical submission, a police officer suggested that my report was false and that I had been unfaithful to my partner”
“You come from psychological abuse that has made you doubt your judgment. All that remains is for them to also doubt your word and tell you that there is no conclusive evidence or that you will get over it, as if the person who is determined to make your life impossible were a creature.” This is said by a woman who, three years after denouncing her ex-partner, has suffered how he ignored restraining orders and saw how a Mosso police officer refused to take her statement.
“Why were you left alone at the bar?”
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Another girl reported a sexual assault by chemical submission while leaving a bar. She explains that her agents laughed at her while they viewed the images from the street security cameras, with comments such as “you look happy”, “it seems like you are holding her hand, like a couple.” She also remembers that the agents suggested that her complaint was false and that she had been unfaithful to her partner, since her attacker maintained that the sexual relationship was consensual. “They told me this with brutal contempt and I was shocked.”
This girl also questions the hospital that performed the forensic examination. “The first doctor told me: ‘Well, you don’t look like a slut,'” and then asked her: “How much had you drunk? Why did you stay alone in a bar?” The center’s administrator also made him explain the violation in public. Days later, she returned to the hospital with bruises on her abdomen. “The police had to call the head of the emergency department to get a doctor to agree to report my injuries, because they refused.” She maintains that she was not offered HIV pills either. “When you go on a weekend, the permanent staff is not there and the protocols are not followed, which is why you did not have access to a psychologist either,” a health worker responded.