Juana Rivas “exploited the argument of mistreatment” with “the miscalculated belief that in this way she would obtain advantages in her favor.” “He could have reported [la violencia de género] at the time.” “She did not explain nor is it understood that if she was mistreated in Italy between 2012 and 2016, to the level that she said, of torture and terror, she would not report it there at the time.” The complaint he filed was a “pre-constituted ad hoc procedural resource to reinforce the deliberate and conscious decision to retain the minors.” Those he presented for mistreatment of his children by his father were “inconsistent” and “implausible.” He harms his children because of his “inability to escape the role of victim of violence.”
These are some of the statements about Juana Rivas contained in Italian psychosocial reports and in the 2018 ruling by Judge Manuel Piñar that sentenced her to five years in prison, six years of disqualification from parental authority, and a fine of 30,000 euros to pay to her ex-husband. . But they are also the phrases that put in writing the stereotypes that continue to be installed in society to the point of affecting judicial decisions and conditioning the point of view and evaluations of some psychosocial teams: women tend to be liars, mothers are Manipulative, they manipulate their children in their favor, they do whatever it takes to ‘keep’ them.
This was confirmed three years ago by the special rapporteur on violence against women, Reem Alsalem, her counterpart for the right to physical and mental health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, the rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, and the members of the Working Group of the UN on Discrimination against Women and Girls. In a specific statement about Spain, they claimed that the Spanish judicial system does not sufficiently protect minors from “abusive parents” and criticized the “discriminatory bias” that makes women’s testimony perceived as less credible than men’s. even if there is evidence of having suffered abuse.
The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has also warned on several occasions about the persistence of stereotypes around the world and the way in which they affect women “not only through individual acts.” , but also because they are reflected in laws and legal and social structures and institutions.”
The victim of ‘the pack’ listened to how a defense lawyer reproached him for his lack of grief and brought up a T-shirt he wore at a party weeks after the attack that read ‘whatever you do, pull down your panties.’ ‘. The woman who reported Dani Alves for sexual assault initially waived the financial compensation to which she was entitled for fear that she would not be believed. Gisèle Pelicot has had to answer if she has “unacknowledged exhibitionist inclinations.”
In the case of Juana Rivas, as in others in which there are complaints of gender violence or abuse or mistreatment of the children by the father, she planned from the beginning the suspicion that her conduct – having filed a complaint for gender violence gender two months after leaving Italy, where he lived with his ex-partner, or fleeing for a month to avoid complying with the court decision on custody – he only intended to manipulate the minors to keep them away from their father. The same thing happened later, when the woman filed up to eight complaints in Italy for mistreatment by Francesco Arcuri against her children. The Prosecutor’s Office then considered them “implausible” and “totally unfounded.” The social services of Carloforte (Sardinia) assured in 2019 that his behavior was “seriously harmful” precisely due to the “repetition” of complaints and his “inability to escape the role of victim of violence.”
The conviction of Francesco Arcuri in 2009 for a crime of injury in the family, which also involved a restraining order of a year and a half, was not taken into account or was not considered relevant when making these types of statements. Nor that the complaint she filed in 2016 in Granada had not been investigated. Or that the children had shown refusal to live with their father. Or that many of the complaints that Rivas filed in Italy occurred after taking one of his children to the hospital.
Now the Prosecutor’s Office has accused Arcuri of “habitually subjecting his children to physical violence, humiliation, insults and threats.”
A pseudoscientific term
These stereotypes and ideas more or less established in the social imagination came to be concretized in a pseudoscientific term that, despite not being endorsed by the medical community, began to be applied in psychosocial reports and sentences: Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). This syndrome, not recognized by organizations such as the American Psychiatric Association or the World Health Organization, was devised by doctor Richard Gardner in the 1980s. According to his theory, a parent (most often the mother) alienates their children against each other in the context of the custody dispute. In practice, it has served to argue sentences that stripped mothers of custody of their sons and daughters, even (or especially) in cases in which there were complaints of gender violence or sexual assault of minors.
The Children’s Law of 2021 prohibited the use of the false Parental Alienation Syndrome and reinforced the right of minors to be heard. The General Council of the Judiciary had been advising against its application for years and warning of the lack of scientific basis. However, the Prosecutor of the Chamber against Violence against Women, Teresa Peramato, stated this year that they continue to encounter expert reports in which the SAP is “expressly or covertly” referred to: “We have to prevent it from being applied, It is a very complex task but we are training for it (…) Experts tell us that when a child rejects a parent, in this case the father, in most cases it is due to the behavior of the rejected parent himself. . We agree that when there is a visceral rejection, when a child does not want to have any type of relationship with the other parent, we must investigate the real causes that motivated this rejection. “You have to listen to the child, listen to him, not just complete a mere procedure.”
The same statement in which the UN special rapporteurs warned about the lack of protection of minors in Spain stressed that, despite the fact that these theories are prohibited in Spain, “they seem to continue playing a role in judicial decisions” against mothers. . Some theories, they continued, that “take advantage of deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes”: “Although they lack credible scientific support, they reflect the idea that when a boy or girl fears or avoids his or her father or mother, it is due to the influence of the other parent, more than to the child’s own experiences.”
The use of SAP has also been questioned in Italy. A resolution of the Court of Cassation in 2022 ruled out the scientific nature of the alleged syndrome as evidence in a case or as a way to decide the custody of a minor. Its use cannot “be considered legitimate” because it serves to build pseudoscientific foundations, the court said, which “seriously affect the lives of minors,” whose interest must prevail.
This Friday, Juana Rivas’s little son, Daniel, will testify in an Italian court after the Prosecutor’s Office has accused his father of continued abuse. He will do so without any precautionary measures having been taken to protect him.
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