Questioned, blamed and very alone.
This is how women bruised by sexual violence have felt in Spain up to now.
The specialized help to these victims of machismo that will extend the law of
only yes is yes
began to make its way in Asturias more than two years ago.
In the Principality, a 100% public crisis center has been operating since 2020, open 24 hours every day of the year.
It guarantees legal and psychological assistance to all citizens aged 12 and over who have suffered some type of sexual assault, even in the past.
Lawyers and psychologists listen to her and accompany her wherever she is, from the first minute and whenever she requests it.
The work of the 15 professionals who care for him has managed to break the statistics: 75% of those assisted end up taking the step of filing a complaint.
In Spain, according to the latest Macro-survey on Violence against Women from the Ministry of Equality, only 8% of assaulted women put their case in the hands of the judicial system.
The Law for the Comprehensive Guarantee of Sexual Freedom provides for the implementation of at least one 24-hour crisis center in each province and the Asturian has become a role model.
Its founders are already advising the rest of the autonomous communities and receive inquiries from other European cities.
The objective is to provide victims of sexual violence, and also their relatives or relatives, what they have never had in Spain: credibility and specialized support from the beginning of the tunnel and to the end.
Either at the time of the attack or 40 years later;
through a phone call, WhatsApp or in person.
Seven lawyers and as many psychologists make up the team, led by a coordinator and in which two of the techniques are specialized in minors.
All of them prove experience in gender violence and have received exhaustive training by experts in crisis centers, in intervention in trauma situations, in victimology or expert psychology.
To receive assistance, it is not necessary for the woman to file a complaint.
She must not even intend to.
“We are at the disposal of what the victim says and we do not have deadlines.
Each woman needs her time to overcome trauma and survive it, ”says Victoria Carbajal, coordinator of the center.
When the intervention is urgent, just after the attack, the staff goes to where it happened.
If the victim so wishes, the center worker does not separate from her at any time during the trance: police statement, forensic examinations, the day after... "Moving around hospital or police units is very complicated and when you have just suffered a trauma of this caliber, even more so.
Having a person who supports you and is with you is extremely important and is part of the recovery”, explains Carbajal.
The accompanying technique slows down the haste of the police or doctors, explains to the victim the steps to follow, does not hide from her the harshness of certain procedures, and calibrates when she is ready to relive what happened and testify.
Victoria Carbajal, lawyer and coordinator of the center, in her office.Manu Brabo
That environment of "friendly faces" in which "they don't feel judged" pushes victims to report a much higher percentage than average.
And it also increases the probability that the crime will not go unpunished, Carbajal points out.
The assaulted woman needs calm and rest to be able to remember and tell everything that happened.
One of the reproaches that the lawyers of the aggressors usually throw at the victims to discredit their testimony is precisely the absence in their complaint of certain data that they later provide, emphasizes the coordinator of the Asturian center, who is also a lawyer: "The backbone of any procedure is the complaint.
A very high percentage of the investigation of the cause depends on the data that is given or not given and on the clarity of the exposition of the facts.
The center's team works in coordination with 112, the police, health centers, town halls, courts and all public resources to combat gender violence, from shelters to information centers for women.
Meetings have been held with all these entities to explain how the service works and ask for their collaboration so that they spread its existence to the last corner of Asturias.
"It is very important that all the entities that can intervene are clear on how to coordinate," says Manuela Suárez Granda, coordinator against Gender Violence at the Asturian Institute for Women.
That it be a 100% public center and not a concession, expose its founders,
Women who one day tried to bury a sexual attack go to the crisis center in Asturias.
The psychologist Victoria Eugenia Nieves says that the casuistry is varied.
There are victims who "panic" when her daughter or son reaches the age at which she was assaulted.
Others are stirred by the trauma they have lived with in silence when a family member goes through the same thing.
And he has treated cases of people who, thanks to prevention and awareness campaigns, now understand the sexual violence they suffered at one point in their lives: “By being able to remember and signify that violence, they can develop very important symptoms.
Sometimes there is delayed-onset PTSD,” she warns.
The psychologist specialized in sexual violence Victoria Eugenia Nieves.Manu Brabo
Nieves has verified that psychological support "from minute zero" is what allows victims to "recover their lives faster."
It is essential, she emphasizes, to assure them of "absolute confidentiality."
In their contacts with the center they do not even have to identify themselves.
The "acute stress state" lasts a month, she explains, and "the first week is the worst";
then "little by little" they improve.
Assistance from the outset is also protection for the future: "We try to ensure that the victim develops resources so that when they face situations of sexual violence again, which they will do because they are a woman and that violence is going to continue there, they can face them." in a safer and more protected way.
“We want to end impunity, but without the victims paying for it”
The Asturian project is inspired by the crisis centers that began to be set up in the Anglo-Saxon countries in the sixties of the last century.
The idea had been in his head since Nuria Varela took office, appointed in 2019 director general of Equality of the Socialist Government of the Principality.
This journalist and expert in gender violence and equality policies explains that sexual violence is hidden in all layers of society, without distinction.
To combat it, she defends, "we must talk about it in the media, but in depth, fine-tuning, and never at the expense of the victims."
All the media in Asturias signed a commitment in 2021 not to reveal data on assaulted women in their information.
“We want to put an end to impunity because it is the gasoline of this violence, but without the victims paying for it,” emphasizes Varela.
“Ana Orantes paid for it with her life and the victim of La Manada has been destroyed.
If the price is very high, they will not denounce.
They have to denounce, of course, but when they are in a position to do it well ”.
The lawyer and psychologist specialized in minors joined last September, after discovering how the cases of assaulted girls and adolescents were many more than they ever imagined.
The center has an internal protocol that allows girls and adolescents to testify in court only once and accompanied by a psychologist.
The judge, the prosecutor and the lawyers of the parties formulate their questions through an earpiece to this technique, which is the one who transmits them to the victim.
The youngest does not even see them, they are behind a mirror.
“You find very serious cases, but they are little people who do not usually have a voice and it is very difficult to give them the protection they need, there are many cracks,” says Cristina Huelga, a lawyer for the center who is an expert in minors.
Since its opening, the crisis center has cared for 302 victims of sexual violence and 64 of them were minors, with an average age of 15 years.
“We guarantee equal attention to all women”, points out Varela.
They have translators even in sign language.
Those responsible for the center seek a "social transformation" also with their expert reports.
They elaborate them “with a victimological perspective”, explains Carbajal, focusing on what the woman recounts and what the trauma that caused the aggression meant to her.
These opinions represent an important change with respect to those drafted by forensic medicine institutes and which are dedicated to assessing the credibility of the complainant, something that does not arise in other crimes.
"Our reports tell how the victim is, what are the consequences of her," says Varela.
The concern to cover women injured by sexual violence at all times permeates even the headquarters of the service.
It is in a small building in the center of Oviedo, a cozy “casina” away from the coldness of the offices.
They have outgrown and the move is already in the offing.
The team will move to a small palace in Mieres that will enable rooms for victims who, after being attacked, have nowhere to return.
They have collided with this need several times, assisting tourists or residents of Asturias attacked by roommates.
The new property will also allow them to organize group therapies.
“We opened without knowing what we were going to find, I never thought we would serve so many people,” admits Carbajal.
“We have learned a lot”, Varela intervenes.
For the Director of Equality of the Principality,
the high numbers of assaulted minors have been like a “smack of reality”: “they hurt me and they worry me.
In this society we are doing something wrong”.
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