The younger women who took to the streets shouting “it's not abuse, it's rape” and the woman who resisted in that portal changed the system and the norm. I'm not referring to the law, but I'm also referring to the fact that they protected a pact of non-impunity.
Before Pamplona, impunity was the norm. The norm was that the victims had to keep quiet and hide the violence they had suffered to avoid social damage and public devaluation. If they got over that hurdle and were able to talk, the aggressor would fight to say that the woman was a liar and try to back down and silence her. If the perpetrator of the crime did not achieve that either, he had one last option: to victimize himself and say that he was the one who was suffering from all of this and that he did not understand anything.
There were many women who fought socially and judicially against that mantra while the judicial process of the Pamplona group rape was being resolved. Over time, after the approval and consolidation of the law of only yes is yes, The first big media case was that of Dani Alves against a young woman. That woman had to sustain those three stages: that of managing to get her voice out of her body to defend herself, that of not letting herself be silenced when all available means were used against her and that of not allowing Dani Alves to victimize himself by saying that he I forgave her.
When they pressure you to silence your voice, you have to resist enough so that they are afraid of you using it. That is what this anonymous woman has resisted (despite Dani Alves's mother and the leaks).
This woman has broken the presumption of impunity that powerful men enjoyed as one more available resource, among all their privileges. I can't even imagine (or rather yes, I can imagine them with first and last names) all of them who feel that they could have gone unpunished on a similar occasion and that now they will think about it a little more.
The release of Dani Alves is not good news. In fact, it's terrible. Legally justifiable and, surely, from a rights-guarantee point of view, victorious.
My question is, rather, why such an anomalously low penalty has been imposed for such serious events. And the answer is that it is still very difficult for us to accept that sexual violence is a crime that is often represented to us as an enigma that we cannot fully understand. After listening to hundreds of stories of children, women and, also, men sexually violated by other men, I wonder if we will find a formula to manage those human passions of public debate in relation to such a serious issue that can hurt the victims so much. when finding oneself between the pages of newspapers.
While some would simply not be happy with life imprisonment and, therefore, with the failure of a democratic penal system, others would delegate everything to education, as an epiphany that would be represented as the due fulfillment of good and not as a completely willed and merciless act of will against a victim. In specific cases, we must find the maximum reparation for the victims and the maximum guarantee of non-repetition of such events.
Today I hope that, despite everything, that woman who survived the Sutton night and the months that followed feels satisfied, believed and repaired, and that the Alves who will come will put their beards to soak, in case they are next.
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