RIGHTS-SPAIN: Women’s Groups Fight Move to Decriminalise Abuse

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alicia Fraerman

MADRID, Feb 22 2001 (IPS) - Spain’s leading feminist associations spoke out Wednesday against an initiative by the Judiciary to decriminalise the abuse many women suffer in their own homes at the hands of their male partners.

The Association of Support for Women Victims of Rape, the Federation of Separated and Divorced Women, and the Themis Association of Women Jurists presented a written statement to the General Council of the Judiciary in which the groups evaluate and criticise the bill drafted by the judicial branch.

Benigno Varela, spokesman for the General Council, defended the initiative, arguing that the criminal courts should only take action on the most serious claims of domestic aggression, while lesser abuse should be handled in civil courts, the same ones that process marriage annulments, separations and divorces.

The report by the Themis Association of Women Jurists covering the region of Madrid, based on studies of 358 claims filed by women there from 1998 to 2000, indicates that 93 percent of the aggressors sentenced for domestic abuse received only monetary penalties.

This situation encourages the continuation of mistreatment, says the report, because “the major cause of violence against women is simply the aspiration to keep them in a position of subordination.”

The text indicates that “violence is the pressure valve that allows discrimination to continue.”

Though violence against women is currently considered a crime, the consequences for the perpetrators are almost nil, says the report by the feminist group.

“Promoting the suppression of the offence of abuse is the equivalent to eliminating criminal penalties against violence that occurs in the home.”

The women jurists stress that the Judiciary’s General Council is not proposing the decriminalisation of all offences or lesser aggressions, but rather only those in which the majority of the victims are women.

If all complaints of this type of violence are remitted to civil courts, which are already overloaded, family violence will be left outside the law and women will be more vulnerable than they are now, affirm the women’s advocacy groups.

María Angeles Jaime, Themis director, pointed out that most criminal sentences “play down the importance of solid evidence of domestic violence, minimise violent or harmful acts, considering them to be mere conjugal disputes in which the victim and the aggressor are equally responsible.”

She added that most of the measures for removal of the aggressor from the home, requested by the complainant, are never even ruled on by the courts.

“This is the legal reality. The fact is evident in more than 50 percent of the Preliminary Reports in which Themis attorneys have defended the victims. The judges do not rule one way or the other, they simply ignore the petition,” says the report.

Trials for domestic abuse are delayed three to nine months after the charges are filed, meaning that proceedings for crimes involving domestic violence last nine to 19 months.

While these cases are pending, the women involved continue to be subject to dangerous situations in their homes.

Psychiatrist Marie France Irigoyen, cited in the report, indicates that the abuser is continuously the abuser, “stuck in that mode of relating to the other and failing to put (himself) in doubt at any time.”

Such is the case, she adds, because “this depravity does not originate in a psychiatric disorder, but rather in a rationality that is combined with the inability to consider others as human beings.”

The feminist associations exhort the General Council of the Judiciary to rule that all claims of repeated domestic violence, or those in which the victim fears repeated abuse, must be tried as crimes – as spelled out in Spain’s penal code.