For two years an unknown man watched Vita’s bedroom window for hours. An unknown man threw stones at Manuela’s window while she yelled at him that she knew where she worked and what her last name was. A neighbor locked Carolina in a room and forced her to watch her masturbate. Lauren had a man follow her to every professional event she participated in. The four women do not know each other, but they all know the same fear: that of having a stalker. The four have sought to report and have run into bureaucracy and a fact that makes everything difficult: harassment, when it does not involve physical or sexual violence, is not a crime. For this reason, the four have had no choice but to gather courage and learn to live with strange eyes besieging them.
Is not easy. Vita Osorio, for example, confirmed that women are not safe anywhere. Not even at home. For her, the harassment began when an individual, who passed her on the street on one occasion, appeared standing in front of his window and began to spend hours there, especially at dawn. Osorio ignored him, closed the curtains. But he noticed that that didn’t stop him. The subject was still there, looking to see her in the cracks of the blinds. After recording him numerous times doing the same thing, he alerted her neighborhood, a residential area of Medellín, Antioquia. To his surprise, the answer is that “Nicolás”, as he was told her name was, was famous for harassing people in the area. Everyone seemed to know it, and everyone seemed to have naturalized it.
Lauren Flor lives in the same city. She says that for a year she has been a victim of harassment from Pablo Restrepo, a student at the astronomy faculty at the University of Antioquia, where she is a professor. After the academic’s refusal to respond to her continuous interactions on social networks, Restrepo turned to digital harassment that soon jumped off the screens. The student began showing up at events Flor attends, standing outside her office for hours and yelling misogynistic insults at her, which explicitly refer to her role as a woman in science.
Like Vita, Manuela Besada’s attacker attacked her in her own home. One day, a stranger threw stones at the window and when she answered it, he yelled at her: “I am her friend Fabián.” Besada clarifies that she did not know the subject, the one who reveals information about her personal life shouting, in front of her house. Carolina Uribe, on the other hand, did know her stalker, he was her neighbor and they were working on her project together. The flirtation turned into harassment after the man made sexual advances toward her and she rejected him, to which he responded, as a terrified Uribe says, by locking her up to force her to watch him masturbate. That first sexual assault was just the first step in an obsession that turned into harassment and that has lasted almost a decade.
Stories of people obsessed with others seem to be more common every day. Although some cases achieve notoriety, they quickly become forgotten. But the problem that persists and, in some cases, escalates from fixation and harassment, to the culmination of violence, murder or feminicide. They are usually men obsessed with women and, whatever the type of harassment, psychological like Osorio’s or sexual like Uribe’s, most have an important gender component. The Medellín Women’s Secretariat has treated 358 women this year for complaints of harassment. 52 of them were victims of sexual violence.
For Viviana Rodríguez, a lawyer who has been investigating harassment for 15 years, practices ranging from street harassment to psychological harassment on social networks are so common because they have been naturalized. “Society has normalized that we have to calculate every step in our lives to avoid being attacked. And in the end, all types of harassment try to lock us up,” says the expert.
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Justice
Added to the constant fear that victims of harassment endure is the tortuous process of seeking justice. Although the situations that Manuela, Vita, Lauren and Carolina have suffered have nuances, they all carry the same frustration when referring to the State’s ability to protect them. The barriers are enormous. Not only at the criminal level, but in primary care routes. What many women do is call the Police, who usually refer them to the Prosecutor’s Office or to the purple lines or patrols in each city. However, if there is no crime or formal complaint, the help that victims receive is minimal.
In 2020, the Court had already shed light on how complex it can be to achieve justice for women. In ruling T-344, it found that two legal operators did not have a gender focus in their decisions, and urged the Ministry of Justice to incorporate it into the administration of justice. Despite this, none of the four women interviewed found that perspective in their processes. On the contrary, they found constant revictimization. When Besada attended a House of Justice, at the direction of the purple line, she was told that her anguish was “a show.” At the Prosecutor’s Office she did not find an answer: “It is not a crime because it has not been systematic enough,” she was told. Vita hit home with the same thing: “Standing in public spaces to look is not a crime,” she responded. For Uribe the story was similar. After years of siege, in 2023 she was motivated to report to the Prosecutor’s Office, where she was told they could only proceed criminally for the episode in which her harasser forced her to watch him masturbate. She decided to do it but, just after a few weeks, the entity filed her complaint. With the support of feminist activists, she filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, about which she has had no news. “Women are not educated so that we can defend ourselves from harassers and abusers. They don’t teach us the routes,” she expresses in the midst of uncertainty.
The complainants feel total helplessness, which comes from the regulations on harassment, according to Rodríguez, the expert. She points out that they have made slow progress in the country, and are much further behind than in countries like the United States. “There the first concept of sexual harassment dates back more or less to the 60s and in Colombia it was only incorporated in 2008,” she points out. “The crime of harassment is insufficient, we greatly underestimate the psychological effects. Security is designed from men,” she adds.
Many times not even complaints are enough. When Flor, the teacher, made her case public, the man’s sister contacted her. She revealed to him that he has several complaints of domestic violence, and that there are other victims of his at the University. Despite this, Restrepo has been studying on campus for 11 years.
Social networks
Given the ineffectiveness of the State, many women have chosen to report it on social networks. An example is the story of Rebeca García in the neighboring country of Venezuela, who gained notoriety in X and brought the debate back to the table. In Colombia, a few months ago, the case of María Antonia Sanín who also made an escrache, a measure protected by the Constitutional Court in the ruling T-275/21. He recounted in X, step by step, the ordeal that he has suffered for almost a decade. Despite the attention his complaint received, he has not been able to stop the harassment. In recent days, she once again warned on her networks that her harasser has continued to harass her, despite the fact that he has a restraining order against him.
In fact, social networks are double-edged swords. For many harassers, they are the ideal scenario to maintain the siege under anonymity, from countless fake accounts on different platforms. Uribe remembers that her attacker, after a few years of calm, searched for her again on networks such as Facebook or Instagram, where he counted at least 30 profiles with which he sought to contact her. Restrepo, Flor’s aggressor, intensified her violence against her and her acquaintances through her networks.
In addition to this, the platforms reflect how society conceives this sexist violence. Opinions on the complaints range between rejection and justifications which, for Rodríguez, the expert, are a huge obstacle to combating harassment. “The general perception is that nothing is so serious as to deprive a person of their liberty. That is why I believe that ultimately it is social transformation that gives us guidelines. The right falls short,” she asserts. Besada follows this line, who highlights the absence of prevention policies.
Osorio agrees and focuses on the urgency of working on a cultural transformation to dispel the patriarchal idea that blames women for the violence they suffer. He also points out that support networks are needed that allow victims to be less alone in the absence of state protection. In her case, her friends accompany her when “Nicolás” appears in her neighborhood, and they have helped her spread the word about the case. However, she knows that not all victims have that support. “I had never felt the need for a support network, until now,” she reflects. Neither Manuela, nor Vita, nor Lauren ask for jail time for her harassers. Only guarantees to live without anxiety.
The victims have managed to have security measures assigned to them by the police, who have had the task of visiting them and visiting the areas of harassment from time to time. They denounce that it has not been fulfilled, that they are the ones who have been forced to change their routines to avoid any risk. When he leaves his house, Osorio shares the location with his best friend and states that the last time “Nicolás” stood in front of his house was two months ago. He knows he will come back. “That’s what he usually does for two years: he appears for a while very insistently, and when I’m on edge he disappears,” she says hopelessly. “I know that the Prosecutor’s Office is not going to do anything,” she concludes.
In the chaos of Flor and Uribe, their harassers have not stopped; On the contrary, their attacks become more acute. At the closing of this note, Flor sent this newspaper a new threat from Restrepo, who sent him a message on his personal WhatsApp, in which he told him that he already knows where he lives. The teacher had to stop teaching in-person classes and will finish the semester in virtual mode. That was the solution of the university directives. Besada temporarily slept in another house, and is looking to move. Osorio put her neighborhood on alert. Uribe is anxiously awaiting a response from some entity. The four cry out for justice, they refuse to let silence and fear continue to be their only alternative. Not one more, they repeat.
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