Being eight years old and watching your father murder your mother: the most vulnerable witnesses of gender violence

Nine years, eight years and five months. They are the ages of the three children who this Monday afternoon were not taking a nap, or swimming in the pool, or bathing at the beach, or playing or watching TV. They saw how his father murdered his mother, with a four-inch kitchen knife, in her house, in Almería. They were the ones who warned the neighbors to call the police, and it was also one of them that his father used as a shield when the agents arrived. Barely a day later, this Tuesday, a three-year-old girl was the one who alerted, with her screams, also the neighbors in Pozoblanco, in Córdoba: the hypothesis that the Civil Guard is handling for now is that her father murdered her mother and later he committed suicide. The couple had three daughters, ages eight to three. It was she, the youngest, the only one who was in the house at that time. These murders are two of the three that have occurred between Monday and Tuesday, along with that of a 91-year-old woman in Tenerife, for which her 92-year-old partner has been arrested as the alleged aggressor.

There is no official, periodic figure that reflects how many children have lost their mothers killed by their fathers or partners. The latest figure is from June 2019, there were then 1,494, according to the analysis carried out by the General Council of the Judiciary when the statistics reached 1,000 women murdered (this 2023 there are already 1,217, in addition to two cases under investigation, that of Tenerife and Pozoblanco). There is, since 2013, an exclusive count of underage orphans: 36 in 2023 and 413 since that year.

Of these, knowing how many have witnessed the murder of their mothers only appears in the analyzes that the Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence of the General Council of the Judiciary makes annually of the sentences handed down in these crimes. In the last report, from 2020, of those studied in “nine cases, the children were direct witnesses of the events or were at home while the attack took place and, on occasions, they were also threatened by the violent action of the murderer.” In those of 2019, in six cases they were direct witnesses; the same figure as in the 2018 revised sentences; and there were three in 2017.

Boys and girls exposed to an emotional, psychological, biological, physical and cognitive tsunami. “And the smaller you are, the more vulnerability, because at a psychosomatic level there are many more risks and consequences,” says Fanny Sánchez Juan, a clinical psychologist, a specialist in violence in childhood, who recalls that they are “direct victims” of the violence they see “affected their bodies, their brains, and all their functions.”

The specialist, from the Association of Feminist Psychology and Psychotherapy, explains that at the neurological level all areas are affected, from the amygdala to the hypothalamus; socially there is a withdrawal; regarding behavior, there is a feeling of helplessness, depression, stress, anxiety and low self-esteem, among others; and in the somatic there is a whole arc.

“It can range from complications in the respiratory system, with the development of asthma, to some childhood diabetes that is related to trauma. Also alterations in the digestive system, which is one of the organs that most somatizes in childhood, or cardiovascular problems, such as tachycardia, or skin problems, such as psoriasis. Also, there are permanent changes in the brain. As all this stress develops, there is a kind of disconnection from reality and dissociations can occur, which is one of the typical responses to an event like this in minors”, deepens Sánchez.

How many of these consequences and how permanent they are has to do with age: “The earlier (it happens), the greater the risk of it becoming chronic, just as if it is not attended to urgently and imminently. That that children do not know anything is completely false, there is a non-conscious part that operates throughout life. What happens is that they don’t have a verbal memory and they can’t put it into words, and the older we are, the more possibilities we have to bring out the trauma, to expose it and verbalize it”.

Also the older, he adds, “more shame and more guilt.” In other words, these implications may not occur at all levels, but they do at the emotional level: “The thought that will arise is whether they could have done something to avoid it, guilt and shame, because they are the children of murderers. And, apart from the recurring images that will appear of the violence experienced, those of the murder in particular will also appear, which will make their lives difficult”. For this reason, sometimes, “there are memory losses and feelings of unreality, and depression, hopelessness and suicidal ideas appear.”

Few trauma resources

How to deal with that moment, quickly and efficiently, “depends on resources that don’t exist”, alleges the psychologist. “Let’s not forget that health systems do not have enough professionals, and what these minors need is good care, a safe space and specialists, care, love and repair. In this way, the trauma experienced can be resolved in a better way. But the consequences for both are not the same: if the resources were the same for everyone, yes, but they are not. Who can pay for a treatment? Who has money, ”she argues.

And it is even more difficult for those boys and girls whose mothers and fathers are migrants. Because on many occasions the family nucleus they have is just them: neither grandmothers nor grandfathers nor aunts nor uncles. Sánchez says that always, above all, “they need emotional support, from people they know”, and in those cases they cannot have it: “Not only do you lose your everyday world, tiny, but you also don’t have a network that supports you, and then you leave to an institution that cannot meet the emotional needs that you have”.

The violence before the murder

Needs that all these minors, over more or less long periods of time, have not seen covered within their own home either. From Fundación Mujeres, they add that there is something that in these cases is dissipated by “the horror” that a murder entails, and it is “how much violence have they seen before that, how many screams or blows they have been subjected to, how they have lived until they have got there.” Their calculations, according to the minors they care for —they manage the Soledad Cazorla scholarships for orphans of sexist violence—, is that seven out of ten have witnessed the murder.

In 2018, the Supreme Court expanded the scope of the aggravating factor provided (in the Criminal Code) for gender-based violence attacks consisting of acting “in the presence of minors” and established that it could not only be applied when they had seen the aggression directly, since that “in such cases it is clear that the minor is directly affected in a very negative way in his training and personal development, in his psychosocial maturation and in his physical and mental health.” For the Supreme Court, “it supposes a traumatic experience, producing the destruction of the bases of their security, as the minors are left at the mercy of feelings of insecurity, fear or permanent concern about the possibility that the traumatic experience may repeat itself. All of which is associated with an anxiety that can become paralyzing and that certainly affects the development of the minor’s personality very negatively, as they learn and internalize stereotypes”.

From the Foundation, they remember a child, years ago, in Galicia: “His father had murdered his mother, he called 112 and, when they arrived, he was in a corner, giving his little brother a bottle. Why should a child be forced to deal with that?

Telephone 016 attends to victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 52 different languages. The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. They can also be contacted by email at 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and by WhatsApp at number 600 000 016. Minors can call Fundación ANAR at 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, You can call 112 or the National Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you cannot call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits

#years #watching #father #murder #mother #vulnerable #witnesses #gender #violence