For months, the writer and artist Paula Parisot He lived with a persistent feeling of lack of protection. It was not only about the harassment that he claims to have suffered on a personal and family level, but also about a judicial process that, far from offering immediate protection, deepened the emotional exhaustion of those who turn to the system in search of protection. In recent weeks, her case took a key turn: the Gender Prosecutor’s Office of the City of Buenos Aires formally took up the case, a step that recognizes the dimension of the damage reported and the need to address it from a specialized perspective.
Parisot, born in Brazil and living in Argentina for years, reported a sustained pattern of harassment, emotional manipulation and psychological violence that led her to request a restraining measure against Eduardo Haberformer brother-in-law and member of a family with strong economic weight in Brazil. However, the conflict was not limited to the interpersonal. According to his story, the real break occurred when the judicial process began to reproduce logics of revictimization: delays, repeated demands for statements, skeptical looks, and an institutional functioning that did not always understand the seriousness of the emotional damage involved.
This journey exposes a structural problem that different specialists in family and gender law have been pointing out for years: institutional violence as a second layer of aggression. Protocols that are not activated in time, operators without specific training and a bureaucracy that is often unaware of the psychological impact of sustained harassment can turn justice into a hostile terrain for complainants.
In the case of Parisot, this wear and tear was not individual. Their children and their immediate environment were also trapped in a climate of permanent alert. Changes in routine, constant fear of reactivation of the conflict, sleepless nights and a direct impact on the family’s emotional health are part of an experience that is repeated in numerous cases of psychological and vicarious violence, where the damage extends beyond the direct victim.
The decision to report also involved exposing herself publicly and reliving episodes that the complainant herself describes as deeply painful. “When a woman reaches the point of requesting a restrictive measure, she does not do it on impulse,” she said in a recent interview. It is, in general, the last resort after having exhausted previous instances and having gone through situations that compromise emotional and psychological integrity.
The intervention of the Gender Prosecutor’s Office now opens a new scenario. It does not imply an immediate resolution, but it does enable tools more in line with the complexity of the case: specialized expert reports, support, preventive measures and a reading that recognizes that the conflict is not merely private, but crossed by power relations and dynamics of gender-based violence.
Still, challenges remain. The slowness of the system, the stereotypes that still weigh on complainants and the lack of a comprehensive gender perspective at all levels of the Judiciary continue to be concrete obstacles. The existence of specialized prosecutor’s offices, warn those who study these processes, is not enough if it does not translate into a real transformation of daily practices.
In parallel to this judicial journey, Parisot found in art a space for resistance and reconstruction. Your next sample, “Geometry of Memory”which will be presented in 2026 at the Brasilia Art Museum and then at the Helio Oiticica Cultural Center in Rio de Janeiro, condenses that process: transforming trauma, fear and wear and tear into a visual language that allows us to recover voice and identity.
The case of Paula Parisot exceeds her personal history. It works as a mirror of the difficulties that many women face when they decide to report psychological and emotional violence. The recent intervention of the Gender Prosecutor’s Office marks a possible turning point, but also leaves an open question: to what extent the judicial system is prepared to protect without harm, listen without suspicion, and guarantee justice without re-victimizing.
by RN
