Best regards my dear Ladies of Hive community, I am pleased to be in a new edition of contests that week by week become more interesting and successful in terms of participation and content. For this week, I am excited to tell you about my experience in the field of "The organic law on the right of women to a life free of violence" stipulated in my country Venezuela; I am a social worker for the Falcón State Police and I was an active part of the victim care department, an office attached to the DIEP (Directorate of Intelligence and Preventive Strategies) until the end of 2020.
Respecto a lo planteado en la primera interrogante del concurso, la dividiré en tres partes para desarrollar adecuadamente
Cada país tiene leyes diferentes para las mujeres, algunas son muy avanzadas pero otras tienen una estructura difícil para obtener justicia en casos de violencia de género. En cualquier caso, todas las mujeres deberían conocer el sistema en su país. |
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Each country has different laws for women, some are very advanced but others have a difficult structure to obtain justice in cases of gender violence. In any case, all women should know about the system in their country.
I must begin by saying that previously, the laws on violence against women in my country were imperceptible, that is, the weight of the law was not felt by the perpetrator, nor was the victim given due attention and protection. With the current revolutionary government, this took a 360-degree turn and I acknowledge it in this regard, because just as I criticize the erroneous socioeconomic policies that I believe have been implemented in the country, it is also fair to highlight the good and establish an Organic Law on Women's Right to a life free of Violence; It is one of the few successes of the national government.
The first thing that changed and it is fundamental was the training part. Previously, the people who were in charge of receiving a complaint of violence against women did not have the slightest idea of how to treat and guide the victim through the relevant regular channels, let alone protect her and apply the appropriate sanction. to the alleged assailant. To be more exact, these cases of violence for the police forces were considered "a calichero" (in my Falcón state, this means a waste of time, something unimportant) and the receivers of the complaint treated a woman attacked with a kind of ridicule , inattention, evasiveness; with the typical expression
”Nosotros no podemos meternos en eso porque son cosas de marido y mujer, mañana uds se contentan y uno es quien sale perdiendo. Tenemos otras prioridades que atender como la delincuencia en la calle”
"We can't get involved in that because it's a husband and wife thing, tomorrow you'll be happy and you're the one who loses out. We have other priorities to attend to, such as street crime”
That style of response was what women who were victims of violence received in a police station (at least in my state) and I say this properly because I experienced it closely in my years of active staff at Polifalcon and it consumed me without being able to do more than providing moral support to the victim, because my function was limited to the administrative, but not to the police operations. For some time now, those of us who are in charge of this type of instance have received comprehensive training on violence against women, which covers from the receipt of the complaint, how the victim should be treated, the verbal and body language use, the regular channels to follow for their protection and of course, punish the alleged aggressor. We are trained by a multidisciplinary team of experts in the field, from the capital of the country and deployed throughout the national territory (Lawyers, sociologists, psychologists, prosecutors, judges, forensic doctors and specialists, high-ranking officials, among others).
I, for example, received training for 21 days in the capital and was accredited as an official of care for victims of gender-based violence and worked in that department at the DIEP of Santa Ana de Coro, Falcón state, from 2016, until the end of 2020 to go into recess for health reasons.
En el caso hipotético o real de que seas víctima o debas ayudar a una víctima de violencia de género, ¿sabes qué hacer? ¿Adónde ir en esa ciudad específica para buscar ayuda o presentar una denuncia? ¿Sabes cuál es el procedimiento? |
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In the hypothetical or real case that you are a victim or should help a victim of gender-based violence, do you know what to do? Where to go in that specific city to seek help or file a complaint? Do you know what the procedure is?
I have not experienced violence myself, but from my professional profile, I have had the opportunity to help many women victims of gender violence, including family members, friends and neighbors. In the case of my city, the first thing a woman who is a victim of gender-based violence should do is go immediately to the police station closest to her home or where the violent act occurred; Call it the Bolivarian Municipal Police, the Falcón State Police, the Bolivian National Police or the Scientific, Criminal and Criminal Investigations Corps (CICPC), we all receive the proper training in the matter of gender-based violence and we have staff available 24 hours a day to assist these cases with respective priority from a department of attention to the victim of gender violence. The receiving body must treat the victim with kind and assertive treatment, taking care not to make discriminatory and out of place comments that may make it the object of a complaint by the victim and face respective sanctions.
When taking the victim's statement, the data of the victim, the story of the succession of the events in chronological form and the data of the alleged aggressor must be perfectly established. The receiver of the complaint must have a lot of patience in these cases, since the victim arrives emotionally bad for the most part and many do not coordinate in her statement; It also happens that they prefer to be cared for by women due to affinity and this right must be respected by the receiving body.
Once the complaint is ready, the forensic medicine examination is carried out by CENAMED, the national forensic medicine center located in the CICPC facilities, Coro, Falcón state, and once the forensic examiner issues his report on the spot, the Execute the arrest warrant of the alleged aggressor (even if there are no obvious signs of violence, the arrest warrant is still issued; verbal and psychological violence are more than enough). The psychological report drawn up by the psychologist of the Regional Women's Institute or of the aforementioned entities is also considered for the file sent to the prosecutor's office in matters of gender violence of the Public Ministry.
An operative police commission inherent to the body that received the case, is in charge of going to look for the alleged aggressor at his home to apprehend him and take him to his preventive detention cells, having a maximum of 72 hours to present him before the prosecution of the public ministry that evaluate the case and determine, according to the evidence and arguments alluding to it, the corresponding criminal sanctions or the acquittal of the accused, failing that. If he is not found at his home, the search begins in the territory of jurisdiction, to resist arrest, officials have the power to use strategies of progressive use of force for his arrest. During the period of waiting for presentation to the prosecution of the Public Ministry, the accused can only receive a visit from his lawyer, if he does not have resources for a private one, the state assigns him a public defender
When being presented before the corresponding prosecutor's office for attention to victims of gender violence and being considered the charges, evidence and the defense of the accused; the judge pronounces sentence. Said sentence may be a custodial sentence for 45 days of investigation where both parties (accuser and defender) will seek relevant evidence for the preliminary hearing in such a period of time or may be released in full considering that the accused has no criminal record and the degree seriousness of the violent act; in this case, a restraining order is ordered, the subject in question cannot approach the victim or else he is sentenced to prison for violation of the measure. Also, community work sanctions are imposed for a certain amount of weekly hours that the authority deems appropriate. In general, they are deprived of liberty for those 45 days of investigation, which almost always tend to be prolonged due to poor administrative procedure, confined in the preventive cells of the receiving body, which are generally overcrowded and the cellmates are not very receptive with abusers of women and children, not to mention sexual abusers.
Es un tema delicado pero si tienes alguna experiencia que quieras compartir con otras mujeres eres libre de hacerlo. |
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Yes, unfortunately yes; I can share with you the case of my cousin Yanoski, who had a relationship for a couple of years with Joel Gerardo, her middle-aged partner and a lonely electrical engineer; She was 58 years old, she had no children and her parents had passed away and when she began a relationship with my cousin, they decided to live together in the house that she inherited from her parents. My cousin was a very flirtatious 46-year-old woman, she loved makeup, hair dyes, fashionable clothes, in short, she was very flirtatious and fun-loving.
After a few months of relationship with Joel, family and friends we began to notice the abrupt change in Yanoski's appearance and behavior; she didn't wear makeup, she let her hair go gray, she dressed like a nun and went out to parties nothing to do with it. However, when one of them spoke to her, she said that everything was fine and that her new way of being and acting was voluntary; I knew something was wrong, her haggard face and trembling voice gave her away, as did the constant rubbing of her hands and it didn't take long to confirm my suspicions; physical violence manifested itself and Yanoski came to me immediately for help, it was in December 2020 in the midst of a pandemic.
I was still working in the aforementioned victim assistance office, but I recused myself from the case because I was emotionally involved and my colleague Ildemar Rodriguez, one of the most prominent officers in the field in the office, lifted the procedure described above. When the police commission went to look for Joel at his house, he resisted, they took him handcuffed to the headquarters, they reviewed him and when they were going to put him in the dungeon with the rest of the inmates he was so scared that he urinated and his body she vanished although she was still conscious and had a lot of pain in her chest. The same police commission took him to the hospital and they diagnosed him with angina pectoris (I don't know what that is, but it's something to watch out for) apparently as a result of the shock of the situation because they are very brave to hit women, but at the time of tea, they show what they really are; Potential cowards.
Mi compañero de labores en Atención a la victima, Ildemar Rodriguez//My co-worker in Attention to the victim, Ildemar Rodriguez
All in all, that angina pectoris and not having a criminal record plus a good private attorney, saved Joel from jail and when he left the hospital, he was released on parole, appearing every 15 days at the Public Ministry courts and performing 35 hours weekly community work for a year and a half, presenting their respective illustrated report to the prosecutor; You can't get close to my cousin, not even in your dreams, he must stay miles away from her, otherwise not even a heart attack frees him from the bars. In the following images you can see the complete writing of the review and the press release referring to his arrest for the case of gender-based violence against my cousin Yanoski, who published it on her Facebook social network.
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a participar en esta genial edición #99 de concursos LOH .I say goodbye with these images because the nature of the content made me expand a bit, but not before emphasizing that silence is the best ally of gender-based violence and I am not only referring to the silence of the victim, that of all of us. It is a myth that between husband and wife, nobody can interfere; that they are couple things and they should fix it, no; In cases of violence, the intervention of a third party, who can be any of us, is imperative and timely, even anonymously and not because of interference, but because such timely intervention can save one or more lives. I invite my friends