Judge Isabel Giménez, on ‘protective mothers’, like Juana Rivas: “The judicial system must listen to the victims”

The substitute judge of the courts of Barcelona Isabel Gimenezrecently awarded the Menina Feminist Justice award from the Ministry of Equality for her contribution to the eradication of violence against women, considers that the case of Juana Rivas and in general cases related to ‘protective mothers’, “We have to learn that we cannot continue failing the victims, that we cannot with more suffering, with more children and adolescents at risk.”

Isabel Giménez, assigned to the courts of Barcelona, ​​is one of the Spanish judges with the greatest training and awareness about gender and childhood perspectivewhich it applies in its resolutions, many of them pioneering.

Following the case of Juana Rivas and ‘protective mothers’, this judge indicates: “When there is violence against women, daughters and sons, it cannot be considered that there is child abduction because the best interests of the child and their protection must take precedence over everything else.

It must be remembered that ‘protective mothers’ are those women who, in order to safeguard the physical and mental integrity of their sons and daughters, resist handing them over to their parents because they have reported and verified that they mistreat and/or sexually abuse them. small. This is what happened to Juana Rivas and her two children.

This mother and her two children were not listened to or attended to properly by the Spanish judges. Now in Italy and with much delay his ex-partner is going to be prosecuted, the Italian Francesco Arcurifor mistreating their children.

“We must not continue adding to the lists of victims because it is difficult for us to believe that there is so much evil in the world, that those who should protect their daughters and sons abuse or mistreat them. Evil exists and the victims must be accompanied and protected from the moment they report the violence, because every time an aggressor escapes unscathed it grows and this puts the victims at greater risk, who become even more vulnerable,” he says. Judge Giménez.

For her, the judicial system can improve in its response to victims of sexist violence. To do this, first of all, “the great judicial deficit that keeps the courts with an unaffordable overload must be urgently covered, which prevents the necessary study of the issues and correct training in gender and childhood perspective which should be mandatory in all jurisdictions and for all legal operators”.

Secondly, “all records of violence, mistreatment, sexual abuse towards the mother, sons or daughters or domestic animals should be accessible (whether or not the parent has been convicted of the crime) and always be taken into account” .

In the case of Juana Rivas, there were initial judicial rulings that contaminated the future of the case. Among these errors is the failure to process a complaint by Rivas against her ex-partner in 2016 for violence against her and her children. Arcuri had been convicted in 2009 for gender violence, but Rivas’s new complaint against him was kept in a drawer in the courts of Granada for more than a year.

“We must listen to the victims and work knowing the effects of trauma on violence: in boys and girls exposed to gender violence, neuropsychological alterations occur and have important repercussions in other areas such as educational, social, emotional, behavioral, etc. “, explains Judge Giménez.

It also emphasizes that the judicial system must take into account the risk indicators “that should serve as a warning for the
protection of victims. And we must not forget that the public powers must assume the due diligence, that we can also be called upon as guarantors of the citizenship rights“.