Daughters of battered women have three times the risk of suffering sexist violence

It was already known that it was not free.

Listening to insults and devaluation - with phrases like "You are nobody" -, living with a father who tries to isolate the mother from his friends, controls her to her fingertips, scares her or beats her, leaves a mark on the sons and daughters, those who the public powers only considered direct victims of sexist violence as of 2015, 11 years after passing a law against gender violence.

The novelty of this study carried out in more than 300 schools is to quantify these effects.

And this is the conclusion: Witnessing sexist violence against the mother multiplies almost three times (2.7) the risk that girls suffer sexual abuse during childhood and gender violence from their partners in adolescence, in comparison with those who have not seen such violence at home.

In the case of boys, the proportion is similar, but the risk is just the opposite: that they become abusers.

The study

presented this Thursday, includes surveys of 10,465 minors between the ages of 14 and 18 from 304 institutes in Spain from 16 autonomous communities (all except the Basque Country), in addition to Ceuta and Melilla.

3,045 teachers and 227 management teams have also participated in its preparation.

The work compares the situations of those minors who claim to have experienced violence at home and those who later admit that they are reproducing it.

Although the risk of its occurrence grows significantly in the cases of male and female children of victims, this reproduction of violence between generations "is not automatic or inevitable," underlines the study presented by the Government Delegation against Violence Gender and carried out by the Preventive Psychology Unit of the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).

In fact, the vast majority of minors - 88% of those surveyed in the case of families where there is no gender violence to 67% among those who live with abusers - assure that they do not repeat these patterns and are not also victims.

The same thing happens with boys: 88% of those who live in houses without sexist violence and 65% of those exposed to sexist aggression do not reproduce these behaviors in their adolescence.

The study does warn that minors exposed to violence at home are at higher risk of suffering physical and psychological health problems, consuming tranquilizers and antidepressants, tobacco, marijuana or other drugs, or developing addictions to social networks.

This exposure increases the risk “but does not determine it”, according to the conclusions of the report prepared by María José Díaz-Aguado, professor in Educational Psychology at the UCM.

"You have to listen to the sons and daughters" of women who suffer gender violence, Díaz-Aguado said: "They have a lot to tell us."

"We have to convey the idea that the majority leave," emphasizes this expert.

“We cannot make the scientific, social, ethical and educational mistake of transmitting that they are fatally condemned to reproduce this violence.

The great majority manage to leave ”.

The Government delegate against Gender Violence, Victoria Rosell, considers that the study demonstrates "the need to carry out prevention of sexual abuse from primary education."

Rosell asks "not to stigmatize or make a prejudicial analysis" of these minors, precisely because most of them manage not to reproduce it in their later relationships.

How to protect these minors?

The greatest risk "is the continuity of contact with the abuser", highlights the work.

At the other extreme, living with the mother reduces the risk: talking to them "is one of the main helps recognized by minors," according to the study.

Almost half of the adolescents surveyed said they had worked on issues of sexist violence in school, another factor that helps reduce the risk of violence spilling over to the next generation, according to the report.

But school work is not enough, the study admits.

A comprehensive treatment is needed: "It is about replacing an ancestral relationship model, based on dominance and submission, with a different model, based on equality and mutual respect."

The teachers, willing to collaborate

Almost two out of every five teachers (36.9%) who participated in the survey had worked against sexist violence in the previous year and considered these activities “very effective”.

Those who have not treated it in their classes (63%) are willing to do so, mainly in tutoring or in comprehensive programs at the center.

Only 4.6% of teachers believe that it is not necessary to deal with gender-based violence at school.

In management teams, only 1.3% see it as unnecessary and 0.4% do not consider it their role.

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