Madrid (EFE).- Fear, emotional or economic dependence, underestimation of risk, pressure from the environment. The factors that can lead a victim of gender violence not to testify against her aggressor or request that a restraining order be lifted are multiple and experts ask to take them into account to protect them.
In 2022, according to information compiled by the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), 16,839 women filed a complaint for gender-based violence and subsequently gave up making a statement against their aggressor, 9.5% of the total.
The debate has been reopened after the recent sexist murder in Vitoria of a woman who had asked to cancel the restraining order that weighed on her ex-partner, or the decision of the judge in Colmenar Viejo (Madrid) who, also at the request of the woman, has annulled the order issued to protect her after withdrawing custody of their eight children from the couple for alleged mistreatment.
“The prerogative of waiving a protection order does not exist in the law,” lawyer Ángela Alemany, from the Themis Association of Women Jurists, points out to EFE, who points out that only the judge has that power.
Even if the victim decides to take a step back, the investigation into cases of gender violence should remain open, given that it is an “ex officio crime”, explains the lawyer, who stresses that an aggression of this type “is prosecuted regardless of what the victim says.
Despite this, his statement “is very important” because, even if there are even physical injuries, “if it is not proven how they were carried out, there is no proof.” When the woman decides not to declare or to withdraw the complaint, she laments, “it is very difficult to continue with the accusation or for a conviction to be issued.”
From fear, to the confidence that everything will change
Among the reasons why these women decide to take a step back are the “situation of special vulnerability” of the victims and the isolation from their environment that the aggressors usually cause, as explained to EFE by the tenured professor of the Department of Experimental Psychology of the University of Seville and researcher specializing in gender violence María Jesús Cala.
Other reasons are the “underestimation of the risk they run” derived from daily coexistence with the violence they suffer or the “myths of romantic love”, which make it difficult to break up by making them feel “responsible” and generate the “false belief that he It will change”, the expert specifies.
In addition, the victims are aware that when they express the intention to separate or report “their risk increases”, warns Cala, for whom it is important “not to hold these women responsible” for the violence they suffer because “they do everything possible to leave of her, and sometimes they believe that by giving their partner second chances the situation can end”.
The exemption from declaring
The waiver of the obligation to testify against a family member is the main cause that motivates the dismissal of a procedure or an acquittal, although in the last report of the Prosecutor’s Office it was indicated that the reform approved in 2021 to limit this right seemed to be beginning to bear fruit.
However, prosecutors warned that when victims are informed that they are forced to testify, they are reticent, respond vaguely, and even, in several cases, go so far as to incriminate themselves, arguing that they were misunderstood, that it was wrong. psychologically or emotionally and that, really, she was to blame for what happened.
In this context, the Prosecutor’s Office warned that a reform that sought to protect victims and eradicate spaces of impunity could even turn against women if the causes that led them to adopt this position were not investigated, such as fear of their aggressor, emotional dependence on him or pressure from the environment.
Thus, he underscored the need to carry out non-revictimizing interrogations and to take into account all the circumstances surrounding the statements of these victims.
And he was again betting on a reform that prevents crime victims from taking advantage of the exemption from the obligation to declare, arbitrating formulas to prevent them from initiating proceedings against these women who oppose them because of their own status as victims.