Too many victims of gender violence

A moment of the rally held last Monday in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria to condemn the sexist murder of a woman in Adeje (Tenerife), committed the day before. Ángel Medina G. (EFE)

In recent times there has been an accumulation of women killed by their partners or ex-partners that has alarmed everyone.

Many wonder, and not without reason, what use have been the measures to raise awareness and protect women that have existed up to now if there are still attacks, deaths and even "herds".

Discouragement causes everything to be questioned, particularly the initial orientation of all the measures, based on the fight against a machismo that is still prevailing in certain sections of society and that must be fought tirelessly.

However, perhaps the time has come to put the political accent on other aspects as well.

The measures are sometimes not efficient because the justice system, as a whole, does not work properly.

We have become accustomed to the filing of complaints, complaints and lawsuits, and almost always they spend several months gathering dust in a court or prosecutor's office until finally those responsible have a material possibility to deal with them, due to the immense accumulation of cases.

In some cases, moreover, the delays are justified because many investigative procedures must be carried out.

But in others, precisely such as crimes of gender violence, there are usually very few steps to take to collect the traces of the crime,

When a case of gender violence is reported, what you have to do is protect the victim immediately and give the lawyers for the parties and the police a few days to provide the probative materials they have collected, which I insist that they are usually scarce.

In those days the witnesses have already been identified, there are reports of injuries, there may have been a psychological evaluation of the aggressor and victim and both are ready to appear before Justice.

Given this scenario, in which it is also unlikely that more traces will be collected no matter how much time elapses, what must be done is not to delay the investigation, that preliminary phase, but simply to judge immediately, so that after denouncing the act of violence, the case does not take more than a couple or three weeks to be judged in first instance.

For this, a simple but ambitious reform would be necessary, drastically reducing that previous phase: the instruction phase.

But that has not been the orientation of the legislator.

In addition, to achieve that speed, some trial judges —those who hand down sentences— should have been specialized, and not investigative judges, because these judges only collect the traces and protect the victims, but do not judge.

However, the legislator, disoriented by a very traditionalist vision and out of date of the criminal process, specialized the investigating judges, creating the so-called “violence against women courts”.

And having proceeded in this way, the sentences can take a long time to arrive, which means that evidence is lost, the victims maliciously persuaded by their aggressors retract,

Helplessness of the victims

Despite the countless efforts of judges for violence against women, what the victim perceives is helplessness.

In addition, given the lack of response in due time, the aggressor is not truly aware of what he has done, unless he is immediately placed in pretrial detention, which is not always possible, and not even reasonable.

Therefore, if a decrease in the numbers of aggressions is really desired, beyond the awareness campaigns and training in gender perspective, courts must be created to prosecute these acts very quickly, without excuses, much less bureaucratic.

Only then will it be perceived that the system works, the victims will feel protected and the aggressors will feel that the weight of authority exists over them.

This way they will stop trivializing their actions themselves.

If so much time is allowed to pass, not only does one not judge better, but much worse, since the evidence of violence is disfigured, which is fatal to protect women.

Jordi Nieva-Fenoll

is Professor of Procedural Law at the University of Barcelona.

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