This is how men who kill their children to harm mothers are like

This Saturday, in Sueca, a town in Valencia, a boy turned 11 years old.

He did it with his mother.

On Sunday, his grandparents took him to his father, denounced for mistreatment last summer and with a restraining order from his ex-wife.

That boy never left that house.

That 47-year-old man killed him with a kitchen knife.

It is the first victim of vicarious violence this year in Spain, and there are 47 minors killed in the context of gender violence since official data was recorded, in 2013. 26 boys and 21 girls who were killed by their parents or their partners or ex-partners of their mothers, many of them, with the sole purpose of harming them.

That violence, relatively recent in its denomination, analysis and data, now has another framework.

It was drawn by Sonia Vaccaro,

Vaccaro says on the phone that they prefer "not to talk about the profile" if it is not that of "a healthy and sexist man, without pathologies or disorders of any kind, who does not want to lose control over the woman, who plans the crime, who is not a moment of outburst but attacks with what is at hand, the objects that he considers to be his property”: the children.

"The

of the Roman Empire, who decided who lived and who died [according to Roman law, that figure had power over the life and death of his wife, her offspring and their slaves]".

Because when vicarious violence occurs, the expert insists, minors are considered by the aggressors as instruments: “That is why sexist violence cannot be dissociated from vicarious violence, because in this there is that concausality.”

More information

Vicarious violence within male chauvinist abuse: what it is and how to recognize it

With this guideline, Vaccaro's research together with other specialists in different fields -with the quantitative and qualitative analysis of two samples, one of 51 cases extracted from 400 judicial sentences and a newspaper library, and another with interviews with women victims of this violence-, it gave results that, in general, the forensic psychologist expected from her experience.

Except for one, which, although known, affirms that it does not cease to produce "impact": in 82% of the cases the murderer was the biological father.

“It is evident that he confirms the hypothesis from which we started, that machismo, power, control, are behind it.

And that also confirms that the crime of violence against women cannot continue to be dissociated from the bond with sons and daughters”.

The aggressor: previous threats

The conclusions of the report indicate that, in most cases, the aggressor was a man between 30 and 50 years old, mainly Spanish (68%) and recently separated from his mother.

“No intellectual or physical disability is observed and the cases with a previous diagnosis of a mental disorder or illness are residual (6%).

The majority of the sample does not have a criminal record (58%) and if they do, 60% is for crimes related to gender violence”, specifies the document.

That same percentage had previously threatened with phrases such as “I will take away the boys”, “you will see what happens to the girls”, “I will take away what you love most”.

After committing the murder, in 12% of cases the murderer denied the facts, blamed other people or claimed not to remember anything of what happened.

And 48% committed suicide or tried to do so.

When, where and how do the murders take place?

Almost half occurred when the parents were in the exclusive care of the girls or boys (48%), either because they were in the visitation regime (44%) or shared custody (4%).

Only in 18% of cases was the crime committed during cohabitation.

The place of the murder was mainly the aggressor's house (42%) and without the presence of other people (68%).

For the most part, they used a stabbing weapon, such as a knife.

“The type of weapon, bought expressly to commit the murder, and the bodily contact indicates not only the lack of empathy towards the victims, but also the aggressor's dominance of the scene with their consequent vulnerability.

The lack of empathy with these and their consideration as objects, not as subjects, by their murderer is determining us," the report details.

Previous violence and judicial protection

Vaccaro explains that "in none of the cases analyzed was there a protection order for the children."

In 16% they identified that the murderers had previously used violence against one of the children, "generally towards the one who will later be murdered";

in 20% the authorities had been previously alerted to the danger and, "within this percentage, only in 20% of cases was some type of protection measure adopted for the mother."

However, in no case "were these measures in force at the time of the crime."

In the case of women, the aggressor had used violence against them in 74% of cases and most had not reported it.

According to the study, “only in 24% of cases there was a prior complaint.

Coinciding figure with all the statistics made.

For example, the

and the figures presented by the General Council of the Judiciary in order to reach the figure of 1,000 women murdered in June 2020, conclude that women only report a percentage close to 20%. of the cases".

Fear of the aggressor, the consequences for their sons and daughters or the economic context are some of the reasons that keep this figure low.

The victims

In the analyzed sample, girls and boys were mostly between 0 and 5 years old (64%) and there are no significant differences by sex.

"The young age shows the degree of vulnerability and defenselessness of the victims, a quality aggravated by being their biological father in whose care they were at the time of the crime," the analysis deepens.

Of these minors, in 18% of the cases they “rejected” the figure of the aggressor;

and "in very few cases, 4%, they asked other adults for help", although, the report details, "the age of the murdered children must be taken into account".

And, although in 14% of the sample the children had shown at some point symptoms of being mistreated —above all “changes in behavior and complaints about the attitude of the murderer”— in “96% there was no evaluation” by the of any professional about how these minors were, "or, at least, there is no record in the judicial cases or the newspaper library."

“A dangerous individual is not only dangerous for the mother”

All these data, says Vaccaro, "coincide with studies from other countries where, although they do not yet include the term as such, they do include crime, especially in the United Kingdom."

There, the analysis of the Criminology team of the University of Birmingham managed, with that analysis, "to change the modality in terms of visits and contact of abusive parents and children", recalls the psychologist.

They established that “in all these cases, masculinity and perceptions of power form the background to the crimes.

The father's family role is central to his ideas of masculinity and the murders represent a last desperate attempt to play a masculinity role.

It should be seen as a specific category of murderer, for a crime that seems to be on the rise."

It is about two decades ago, says the expert, when these murders "began to increase, to be more visible."

Since "the world begins to have laws and regulations to protect women."

Something that the study collects: “When an abuser cannot access the woman to continue the power and control over her, he exercises violence on the daughters and sons (whom he takes as objects), to harm her, taking advantage of the fact that justice and institutions dissociate crime and harm to the mother from the danger of being cared for and in contact with girls and boys”.

In Spain, since last September, a reform of the Civil Code establishes that, as a rule, a visitation regime cannot be established when the father "is involved in criminal proceedings" for sexist violence.

But there are exceptions.

That same law indicates that "the judicial authority may establish a visit, communication or stay regime in a resolution motivated by the best interests of the minor."

In the case of this weekend in Sueca, in Valencia, the sexist violence court that was handling the abuse process against the mother did not issue a visitation regime for the father.

However, the family court was unaware of the existence of this process and filed a complaint.

The data between them is not automatically connected.

Victoria Rosell, the Government delegate against gender-based violence, explained this Tuesday in an interview on

that in this case the family case "should have inhibited the violence against women", and recalled that "one of the advantages of the Law of 2004 [that of gender-based violence] is that it established these specialized courts, which have shown that they serve to unify criminal and civil procedures in a single judicial body.”

Although the then couple went first for civil matters to sign a mutual agreement —"something absolutely common in women victims of violence, because they are not in a position to take on more wars," Rosell deepened—, the family court, "if you have access , who has it, to the record of measures of the administration of justice, or deploys all due diligence to find out or just ask if there is violence, even if there is no complaint, then that sentence [that of shared custody] would not have taken place ”.

Now, this report can serve for two things.

Putting on the table that "in the age of technology, it cannot be that they continue without crossing data," says Vaccaro: "And to convince judges that this cannot continue to happen, that a dangerous individual is not only for the mother.

No other crime is dissociated, no one would put a bank robber to guard a jewelry store because he only robs banks”.

There is “more than enough empirical data to eradicate” this violence as well.

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