Male violence In the last four months, five minors have been killed in Catalonia by their parents. The latest case was that of two eight-year-old twins whom the father killed on Tuesday evening, together with the mother, at their home in El Prat de Llobregat. The man later committed suicide and the police and justice are investigating the crime as a case of male violence. In fact, filicides – the death of children – and vicarious violence – the death of offspring to cause unbearable and lifelong suffering to the other parent, which is usually the mother – are considered extreme manifestations of masculinity , along with femicides. The motivations for these homicides are diverse and difficult to generalize, but the increase in cases since the beginning of the year worries the experts consulted by the ARA and the institutions: this year a third of the infanticides of the last decade and the Generalitat has announced the creation of a cabinet of independent experts specializing in vicarious violence.
Since 2015, thirteen children and teenagers have died at the hands of their parents, five of them this year. In addition to the double crime in El Prat, last Wednesday a man was arrested for murdering the five-year-old son, Ajax, in Bellcaire d’Empordà and for trying to kill the woman, who survived the attack. Last January, two children were found dead at home with their father, poisoned by carbon monoxide, in a case that has not yet been confirmed as vicarious violence. “We are seeing an obvious increase in the most serious levels of vicarious violence, which are murders. Twenty years ago there were already cases, but it was not talked about. Now we have named these crimes and incorporated them into the box of male violence”, explains the psychologist and gender expert Gemma Altell.
In 2015, Maryna and her 7- and 12-year-old children, Michelle and Maxim, were murdered by the children’s father in Castelldefels. In 2017, in Barcelona, it was Ingrid and her baby, Sherifa. Three years later, on Kings Day 2020, 3-year-old Ciara’s father killed her and her mother in Esplugues. In April 2021, Varvara and her mother died at the hands of her father and husband in Lloret, and in August of the same year Leo’s father murdered him in a hotel in Barcelona’s Paral·lel. In all these cases there is a common factor: male violence. “Before, violence towards children was separated from violence against mothers, but there is increasing awareness that it is an instrument to harm them”, adds Altell.
The register of minors killed by their parents includes two cases in which it was the mother who perpetrated the crime: in December 2019, in Girona, a woman killed her 10-year-old daughter, and in 2021 the mother of Yaiza, aged 4, confessed to having killed her in Sant Joan Despí due to a dispute with her father. The death of the mothers, the femicides, have left 97 children and adolescents orphaned.
Domination and power
The experts consulted remember that vicarious violence is exercised against those who need to be protected the most, the most vulnerable, and with the aim of dragging the partner or ex-partner into a spiral of pain for life. However, it is not easy to find an explanation for the increase in murders of children in recent months. According to criminal lawyer Laia Serra, the fact that there is more violence against children responds to an interest in harming women. “These are crimes so terrible that the perpetrators themselves cannot bear their acts or face social judgment, so they also take their own lives or try to,” he adds.
According to Serra, social phenomena and violence are always multi-causal and require complex analyses. “Now the social, economic, residential and even climatic conditions increase the feeling of uncertainty and pressure, which is added to the fact that feminism is advancing and there are those who receive social evolution in a refractory way and rebel. to maintain control,” says the lawyer. For experts, gender-based violence and specifically vicarious violence is not only a crime, but a message and an affirmative act. “It is gender-based violence because it underlies the idea of domination, of control . The man is the owner of the lives of the children and the wife”, says Serra. “Behind it is hidden the “I am the center of the world and I dispose of them and, if I decide that they must die, they die”” , agrees the psychologist specialized in male violence and child and adolescent psychopathology Raúl Lizana.
Behind it is hidden the “I am the center of the world and I dispose of them and, if I decide that they must die, they die” ”
Raúl Lizana psychologist
In the case of El Prat, the victims’ environment has asked that the triple crime and the man’s suicide not be considered a sexist crime and they say that the trigger for the murders was a serious mental disorder “that no one knew about treat”, as explained by the woman’s brother in statements to The vanguard. “Can it influence? Maybe yes or maybe not. It can be a precipitant, but not a cause. The disorder does not invalidate the position and motivation of domination,” says Altell. “There are also many stereotypes, there doesn’t have to be previous physical violence for it to be sexist,” adds Serra. “But thinking like this is less committed for the environment and for society,” admits Lizana.
The fact that there are no previous complaints also does not mean that the woman or the children have not previously suffered violence from their killer. “Death is the most serious manifestation, total revenge, but there is usually abuse,” explains the psychologist. They can be mild or subtle, they can be minimized and framed in couple discussions or tense moments, but they are almost always there, he adds, and they range from bad-mouthing the parent to making visits difficult or temporarily disappearing with the children. Also, reporting isn’t insurance either, he says, because he still resists the idea that a man who hurts his mother can be a good father. “87% of visits to abusers are maintained despite the fact that they are convicted and should not be able to access the children, as the law states, as it is applied in the courts,” he concludes.
2024-04-11 20:38:50
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