She lives hiding from the violent man who was her partner for more than 20 years and from the one who managed to escape from confinement one morning.
She went out into the street barefoot and with her two children, determined not to look back.
She barely managed to overcome the anguish and vertigo and began a fight in court against two decades of harassment and death threats.
She today she is still terrified.
Powerless.
disappointed.
She contacts EL PAÍS from her secret refuge, located in one of the 313 municipalities of Galicia.
She fears that at any moment her ex-husband, who spent years in prison for attempted murder against another person, will find her and kill her.
Or do something to her two youngest children.
For that, she wants a notary of her history.
So that she remains publicly aware of the defenselessness that she has felt in her judicial journey because of a system that she, she denounces,
runs into contradictions.
“He is going to come for the three of us, but there is no justice to defend us.
It is proven that this man is dangerous, but I live defenseless with two children who have suffered abuse, ”says Esperanza, an assumed name that she has chosen so that no one loses her when she hears her message.
The day of her release, Esperanza and her children were intercepted by the police in the street in a state of
shock
.
The assistance machinery for victims of sexist violence was launched without delay, no one considered questioning their suffering.
They slept in a foster home for six months and the VioGén system declared her case of “special relevance”, qualifying the risk to her and her children as high.
To her desperation, neither this assessment nor the forensic and social reports that coincide in assessing the danger have prevented the case from being finally filed and, on up to four occasions, the courts have denied her a restraining order.
Esperanza gives this newspaper the history of her struggle to survive sexist violence, a complete dossier of police reports, social and forensic reports, court statements, orders and sentences.
Two years of bureaucracy that began the morning of the confinement in which she, for the first time, managed to escape from her house during one of her then-husband's usual violent outbursts.
Stepping onto the street, without shoes and with just what she was wearing, her son whispered to her: "Mom, we finally managed to escape."
She made up her mind never to return.
Background
The fears of Esperanza and her children towards the man they lived with were officially recorded even before that morning when they left their home, leaving all their belongings there.
The family had already been cared for a few years ago by the social services of its City Council due to the economic problems it was experiencing.
A municipal report confirms that the woman reported her husband's episodes of aggressiveness at that time and the child had to be treated by a psychologist from the program for minors who are victims of violence.
Esperanza tells this newspaper about the regime of psychological terror to which they were subjected: her ex-husband locked the three of them in rooms and threatened them with sharp objects.
Of course, he hardly left a physical trace of her aggression: she remembers two punches and usual "pushes".
And fear.
The two social workers who assisted them at that time sensed the hell they were living in, but they couldn't get Esperanza to take the step to get out of it.
“The youngest son was very scared.
He didn't want to go to class, his stomach hurt… He didn't want to leave her mother alone at any time”, explains one of the officials.
They also met her father: "We were struck by the aggressiveness with which he treated her, even in front of us."
Both went to the children's school several times.
There they already revealed that the little ones said that they sometimes slept in the family business premises "so as not to be with dad".
The escape
In the spring of 2020, the first violent outbreak occurred from which Esperanza and her children, then 11 and 9 years old, were able to escape.
They fled barefoot, without physical injuries, but psychologically destroyed.
They were intercepted by the police when they wandered down the street and received urgent care at the municipal information center for women.
"I covered the girl with a big scarf that she had around here," sadly recalls one of the social services officials.
ILLUSTRATION: MARÍA JOSÉ DURAN
The team that assisted them in this municipal center, made up of a lawyer, a psychologist and two social workers, has almost 20 years of experience in gender-based violence.
They do not explain how the courts have not given credibility to Esperanza's testimony.
The day of the flight they heard the terrible story from the mouths of the little ones and in the absence of her mother: “They told us about the death threats that her father made to them.
And they repeated that it was the first time they had managed to escape.”
The help of the Administration
Esperanza ended up with her little ones in a foster home and, after a few days, managed to overcome the terror of filing a complaint.
She recounted the years of mistreatment of her to the police, the Civil Guard, social services, the workers of the shelter, the forensic team of the Xunta and, of course, the court.
As it happened in full confinement, this last statement was by videoconference and it was very cold.
"The conditions were very limiting," laments her lawyer.
In the foster home, his son told the psychologist details of his father's mistreatment that Esperanza was unaware of: “I locked him in a room and told him 'I'm going to kill your mother.'
I didn't know half of the things he was doing to them."
From the Administration she received help and assistance to find a job.
An agent from the security forces specialized in gender-based violence also assisted her.
In this part of the system, she says, she has no complaints.
No criminal protection
Soon came the first disappointment.
The first court that addressed her complaint denied her a restraining order from her then-husband towards her and her children, a decision that caused Esperanza profound helplessness.
What were the reasons given for such a refusal?
The order alleges that the day they managed to flee from their executioner he did not cause them any physical injury;
that he does not present evidence of the story of continued mistreatment of him;
and that the risk assessed by the police or the Civil Guard does not have to be assumed by the courts.
The appeal to this judicial decision before the Provincial Court was rejected.
The case was heard by another court, but this court again denied protection measures.
"The [second] judge was tied to the resolution of the Court, because at that time nothing new happened,"
After alleging throughout the procedure a lack of witnesses or medical reports, the court finally filed the case.
The forensic report of the Institute of Legal Medicine of Galicia (Imelga) that detected in Esperanza a psychological state compatible with having experienced "a situation of prolonged abuse over time" was not taken into account.
The experts, in her conclusions, did not rule out the possibility of a new situation of violence against her and the children and recommended "protective measures".
His advice was not heeded.
A few months later, Esperanza denounced her ex-partner for surveillance.
He has been prowling the area where children move and one day he found it.
The fear that he was never gone gathered strength.
He went to court again to request a restraining order for the "enormous suffering" that this behavior causes the three of them, but since the case for sexist violence was already closed, it was not granted: "I feel totally powerless and the police also, because if there is no restraining order, even if he approaches me they cannot do anything”.
Last year, to go to work, he traveled 20 kilometers a day, although his position was only seven, to avoid “certain areas”: “When I leave work at night, I study well where I am going.
If I see that a colleague who goes out with me is going to one side, I go behind so as not to go alone.
I never go to the same place.
I park and pray the rosary all the way home.
I live like this.
My children barely have a social life.
Everything to prevent him from finding us and to be able to live in peace.
The courts have denied him protection measures four times.
All this despite the fact that, when she escaped from her house, the security forces assessed her risk as "high", both for her and for the children.
And even when the forensic doctors and social services confirmed in her reports that the little ones were terrified of her father and that her mother spent years recounting episodes of violence before she dared to go to a police station.
Esperanza feels that she has been “fighting against a wall”, that they listen to her when she asks for help, but “they don't solve anything”.
“For her great luck, the Administration has given her protection.
If not, she would have been totally helpless, ”emphasizes her lawyer.
With civil protection
While the complaint for sexist violence without a restraining order was being processed, Esperanza had to wait two years for the divorce decree.
The procedures to end the relationship are considered a period of special risk by experts.
The ruling of the civil procedure arrived with her husband already exonerated of mistreatment, but its content collides with the result of the criminal procedure: it denies the father communication and visits with his children because he considers it accredited, due to the judicial investigation and the statements of the children, the "fear" they feel towards him.
Esperanza's lawyer highlights the "extraordinary" of this judicial resolution, since she rules out that the children see the parent without any conviction or complaint for abuse in progress.
ILLUSTRATION: MARÍA JOSÉ DURAN
“If nothing has happened criminally, how is it that civil visits to the father are not allowed or at a controlled meeting point?” asks the psychologist who treats Esperanza at the women's care center.
The team's lawyer concludes that the divorce sentence "gives credibility" to the work of social services, "but not at the right procedural time, it had to have been before."
At the women's care center they regret that the criminal courts have not taken into account their reports "made conscientiously" and confess their "frustration".
“It is a flagrant case in which we have worked hard and as a team, because it also affects children.
And we have the feeling of not having been able to provide a solution because the system has frustrated it.
The suffering of the victim has not been accompanied.”
helplessness
Esperanza complains bitterly that she has complied with everything the system asks of her and that, even so, she has not obtained protection for herself or her two minor children.
She cost him many years, but she ended up denouncing her abuser.
She also recounted how many times it was necessary during those more than 20 years that she spent in isolation, under the tight control of a man with a history of attempted murder, threatened and pushed.
She has discarded the idea of taking her children and running away like Juana Rivas to avoid committing a crime: “I have done everything within the law.
I could have taken my children and gone to the other end.
In the foster home, the psychologist, after speaking with my children, said that she considered that we were at a very high risk.
And she advised me to move out of Galicia.
My family told me that I was crazy because I was committing a crime.”
Esperanza is relieved that her ex-husband has been denied visitation with the children.
But the fear is still there.
"I am totally sure that she is going to go for me," she confesses.
"Either now or later."
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