“The first blow came when I was pregnant,” Joana begins. “It was in the belly, too.” Her story hurts. It’s tough, but her fight is even tougher. Her name is Joana Bauzá, she is 41 years old and has three children. She is a nursing assistant, although she has not been able to practice for a few years. She is a mother, friend, neighbor and is also a survivor of gender violence, the scourge that has killed 1,239 women since 2003 (and one woman and two children so far this month). “For years I suffered attacks of all kinds,” she tells CASO ABIERTO, the events and investigation portal of Prensa Ibérica, “sexual, physical, psychological…”. The man she married was never a prince, but He became the worst monster to live with, summarizes. “I didn’t see it…she was blind with love.”
Joana, together with this medium, looks back and tries to summarize the past years. The attacks, for the most part, are indescribable. The consequences, countless. He has undergone surgery twenty times. She is already a chronic patient, she has permanent disability. She can’t work. “By inserting objects into me while sexually assaulting me, he destroyed me inside. “I have urinary and fecal incontinence.” She tells it, despite the harshness of his story, because “we have to talk of the terrible wounds that leave you for life this type of violence.”
She struggles to overcome what she has experienced. He will sit this Thursday on the bench of the Provincial Court of Mallorca, accused of two crimes of threats, one of sexual assault with penetration, and one crime of habitual abuse. Both the Prosecutor’s Office and the private prosecution ask him 37 years in prison.
Pregnant
“Our story began in 2005. We got married…”, Joana retreats. He, ambulance driver; She, a nursing assistant, “at first everything was normal.” The first baby arrived, a girl, and she did so in a climate in which control already predominated, she says. “At first I didn’t realize He came from a family of ten siblings, very patriarchal…“. Jealousy, reproaches, and insults came. “He didn’t let me go out with my friends. “He belittled me, insulted the way I dressed… but I didn’t realize it, I was blind with love for him.”
According to Joana, his work hours were reduced. “Before he could have been 15 or 16… and, when he was home longer, everything exploded,” she remembers. “I was four months pregnant with my second child. It was the first time he hit me”. Along with these blows, the first threats also came: ‘don’t even think about reporting it or I’ll kill you, the girl and the baby.’ Several apologies and regrets followed: “It came with flowers, details…”. Joana forgave him.
“He hits me, hits me against the wall and hits me very hard on the ear. That’s why today I have hearing loss”
The first complaint came in 2014. “Two weeks before he had attacked me and I had gone to the hospital, but I don’t have the strength to separate myself and, furthermore, he asks me for forgiveness again.” After that, “he hits me, He hits me against the wall and hits me hard on the ear.. So strong that this is why I have hearing loss. Then she grabs me by the hair and drags me across the floor. “My children saw everything because they were in front.”
The Civil Guard arrested him and a quick trial was held. “After months he asked for forgiveness again.” Joana accepted the apology, again. “In the cycle of violence, there is a honeymoon, you know? You are nullified, and he caramelizes you again…” They live together again, the abuse, insults, and violence return, even more intense.
“It blew me away”
The nightmare intensified. “In addition to the beatings, the insults, that’s when sexual assaults begin. That’s when…”, Joana pauses to say: “that’s when Every time he comes home from work, I have to be prepared to have rsexual elationswhether I want it or not“. Increasingly stronger and more violent attacks, the woman describes. “He puts bottles in me, he puts things inside my vaginal and anal organs… he bursts at me.”
“That justice is so slow, that the process is very long, makes our pain chronic,” the woman denounces.
Joana experienced the last attack with her eldest daughter present. She told him that she wanted to separate from her. “He hits me in the face and He grabs my daughter by the hair, I see that he takes her to the bathroom…“. Joana asked for help, “I called 112.” The police and emergency services arrived at the house. That’s when she said ‘this far’. She reported what had happened and there was no turning back. “I remember it was November 29, 2015. I have that date written down as if it were my birthday.” Joana entered the barracks without looking back. “It was when I was born again.”
12 operations
Surviving the horror has left him scarred. “I go with a walker and a cushion. I have a sacral root neurostimulator (a kind of pacemaker) for the fecal incontinence, and a urostomy– little bag in the belly – for pee,” explains Joana.
Her medical history is completed with chronic pelvic pain, vaginismus, anal pain, multiple chemical sensitivity, fatigue and chronic low back pain, neuralgia of the pudendal nerve, and vascular compressive syndromes such as pelvic congestion syndrome and May-Thurner syndrome. “I have post-traumatic stress that has caused fibromyalgia, bruxism, tension headaches, Menier syndrome, anxiety and depression…” The list of diseases goes on. “For the pelvic floor I have had 12 operations, but in general, on the rest of my body, I have had 20 operations.“. A week, his medical appointments do not go below three.
Relive the horror
Protected with a screen, this Thursday Joana will tell everything she experienced before the judge. She has done it on several occasions,”It is very hard to restate all the details. It’s something I wanted to erase from my mind, but I always have to remember it. Unfortunately, “Everything related to justice and society is going very slowly, this would have to change.”
Joana says that the hearing that is held this January 25 started in 2019, “after two years of psychological therapy I really realized everything he had done to me.“, and a trial was not held until years later. “It is an added pain for me and my children. Furthermore, along this path, we have had three more trials: divorce, custody and another for non-payment of pensions.” Joana asks for agility for the rest of the cases, “that Justice is so slow, the process is very long, it makes our pain chronic.“.
He got ahead. She has done it again and again. “Although my life has changed, I can no longer work and that made me very happy, today I am a strong, brave woman,” Joana smiles. Her conversation with this medium has one objective: “to convey a message to all women who are going through a similar situation, May my story serve so that no one goes through what I have gone through.”