To talk about vicarious sexist violence, and to be able to act against it, it is necessary to understand, first of all, that in vicarious violence there is more than one victim. That if the main victim is the one who suffers the direct damage, the girl or boy who is attacked and even murdered, that reality is compatible with her mother also being the main one damaged by that aggression in which the abuser uses the daughters and her children to hit her in what hurts her most to subdue her, to punish her, to destroy her life. In vicarious violence there is more than one victim, and all of them need protection as subjects of rights and as a family. “You come or I’ll kill you,” his partner told the mother of a 2-year-old boy before beating him to death.
We are alarmed that this year, and since 2015, we are facing the highest number of girls and boys murdered by the partners or ex-partners of their mothers, often also the fathers of these children. Nine. On the other hand, we are not alarmed that, precisely, since 2015 – the year in which the law established that girls and boys who live in family contexts where there is gender violence are recognized as victims of it –, the maximum protection that it grants them is ignored. the law because it is barely known and applied by those who have to act with due diligence. Neither the social services, nor the equality centers, nor the psychosocial teams, nor the meeting points, nor the prosecutor’s office nor the legal profession, nor judges nor courts recognize, despite the law mandating it, that girls and boys – whether or not they have been object of direct abuse – are victims of gender violence from the moment they live in a home where there is sexist violence against their mothers.
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