The Ministry of Equality wants to include in the statistics of violence against women what they call “institutional violence”that is, that which judges, police officers, teachers or doctors consider to be exercising.
This was stated this Friday by the Government delegate against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, at the presentation of the study Institutional violence against mothers and children. Rosell referred specifically to the Strategy to combat sexist violence, drawn up by Equality, and which claims “analysis, evaluation and accountability mechanisms before cases of institutional violence». According to the senior official, it is necessary “to include institutional violence in studies and statistics, because without having these data we cannot define public policies, in times of hoaxes and fake news.”
“institutional violence”
with the term “institutional violence” Equality refers to “the lack of response (inaction) or an inadequate response to the victims of sexist violence.”
In this context, judges, police officers, doctors and other actors in direct contact with the victims are targeted, to whom certain attitudes and behaviors are attributed that could lead to “re-victimization”. Equality blames these professionals for providing poor or no care, even discrediting the woman and questioning her testimony.
In the aforementioned strategy, the department of Montero considers that “members of security forces and bodies, health personnel, psychosocial care, educational and judicial personnel” engage in inappropriate “professional practices” such as “infantilization, paternalism/maternalismdepersonalization in the provision of services, dehumanization (such as the deprivation of privacy that requires care) and even direct victimization (through minimization, the ridicule of the facts lived or intimidation, warning about the irremediable consequences of the action of denouncing and threats about his own prosecution if it is proven that he is lying or conscientiously causing damage.”
In conclusion, according to Montero’s department, women “feel responsible and judged” for “inaction, inadequate treatment, the absence of a gender perspective, stereotyped attention or the slowness in some response processes.”
“Protective Mothers”
Rosell addressed the matter in a forum in which he criticized the judges, referring this time to what he calls “protective mothers.” A definition with which Irene Montero herself referred on her day to the mothers convicted of the kidnapping of her children, such as Juana Rivas or María Sevilla. The Government delegate against Gender Violence was moved to denounce the “criminalization” that, in her opinion, these women suffer.
The act took place precisely two days after the Italian Justice denied Juana Rivas custody of the youngest of her children. The sentence contains numerous reports from psychologists and professionals who have interviewed the minor, in which it is stated that the mother induced him to make accusations against the father, the Italian Francesco Arcuri: “It is as if my mother washed my brain Talking about dad,” the little boy once exposed after returning from a summer vacation in Spain.
During the event, Rosell denounced the “spiral of civil, criminal and criminalization discredit” in which these women, called “kidnappers, disobedient, resistant”. He also lashed out at the media, pointing out that these women are treated as “crazy”.
The Government delegate criticized the “self-defense” from certain institutions that exercise “institutional violence” and that, she considers, “sometimes reaches extremes that seem almost institutional revenge against those who have rebelled and have revealed the seams of the system” .
