Teresa Hernández Cajo
DEMUS, Peru
As we know, Domestic Violence is a serious social problem in all over the world. It affects physical and mental integrity, security, lives and development possibilities, of women , in other words, it affects their human rights. In the last fifteen years Domestic Violence has obtained social recognition; however to eradicate it we all require the participation and the commitment of men and women. But also we need to know its characteristics and identify the difficulties we face to achieve it in our societies.
In my country, Peru, Domestic Violence against women has been brought to the forefront thanks the work of the feminist organizations that created Legal Services in the '80s.
Based on the information picked up in these legal services we begun to confirm what we had already sensed : The family violence affects women of all the social classes, throughout their lives and all races, independent of their instruction level and professional formation, or civil state. Thus it includes women who share their lives with a man without getting married and those who are divorced. We also confirmed that many women do not report domestic violence, in spite of being battered during several years.
It is that moment when the women's movement launched campaigns with slogans: "Let's Break the Silence" and "If he hits you report it" with the purpose of putting an end to the social silence. Invariably the silence of the victims blocked ways to make it socially visible, and as a consequence prevented attempts to eradicate these practices.
However the Judicial system and the proceedings were often at best inadequate and at worst repressive making even more likely the fact that many women failed to report violence. Even those who did, were often frustrated in so far as a guilty verdict failed to guarantee that she would not be battered again.
Also, in Peru, we carried out actions to pressure to the State in order to achieve:
Our actions and reflections were a response to all the difficulties we found in the legal system and the incapacity to resolve the violence against women. At the same time, academic feminists, began to carry out research to ascertain the characteristics of domestic violence, its social dimension, and its causes and consequences. However, this research was exclusively undertaken in Lima, and we now need to know what is happening in other places of Perú -- especially among indigenous groups. Also feminist researchers have proposed the notion of "restorative justice". 1
The results of both the campaigns and the research were useful to make changes like:
This special Law introduced, for the first time, the psychological abuse as a form of domestic violence, and created a special procedure to seek protection orders to the victims. The Domestic Violence Law also established the state policies to eradicate the violence. However, after almost six years, the government budget has not still been assigned to implement those policies.
At the same time, a similar work have been taken place in other countries in Latin America. The women's movement in Latin America and the Caribbean achieved the promulgation of a number of special laws about domestic violence: for example in Puerto Rico in 1985, Chile in 1994, Bolivia in 1995, Argentina in 1994, Colombia in 1996, and Venezuela in 1998.
The normative advances have been significant and important; however, at the present time we continue to confront practical and cultural difficulties in the application of the law. This why researchers are interested in identifying the difficulties in the application of the Law of Domestic Violence and the barriers to the implementation of the public policies. For two years, researchers have identified the necessity to evaluate what is happening and what kind of changes have been produced since the promulgation of Domestic Violence Laws in Latin America and Caribbean.
At this time we are trying to achieve a regional evaluation and assessment of the levels of gender violence, and in particular women's situation during periods of peace, armed conflict and post armed conflict. This study will evaluate the normative and institutional response in 17 countries throughout the region. Also it will analyze the social response to the actions developed by Non Government Organizations of women in Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Argentina.
Specifically in Peru, we are interested in:
Violence Against Women 2
Heleieth I.B. Saffioti
Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo
There are three main axes that structure society: gender, class and race/ethnicity. Throughout history, they formed a knot, whose characteristics are not the same, as we find in each contradiction, isolated from each other. The nature of this knot is also contradictory, but much more than each one of the contradictions. This symbiosis has happened through history and has much more contradictory power than its components and has a dynamic of its own. For theoretical and practical reasons, we should never consider each contradiction in separate analyses, but in the context of this knot. This presents a new modality. The conception of this knot is very important in order to deal with the multiple subject, the multiple social agent. All members of society live under the fathers' law. Traffic in women is a result of that.
Therefore, gender violence, especially in its domestic modality, is legitimate in the society's eyes; at least tolerated. To keep the family united is more important, from the societal standpoint, than promoting a rupture of this sacred institution. In the name of the sacred family, millions of crimes have been committed against women and children. To be brief, here are some points to stress.
These reflections derive from two empirical studies. The first one was carried out from 1988 to 1992 in São Paulo about incestuous abuse of children and adolescents. The sample was small: 52 families, with 52 aggressors and 63 victims. Biological fathers were the great majority of aggressors: 71.5 percent. Stepfathers came in second place, with only 11.1 percent. These categories add up 82.6 percent. This means that the father, either biological or social, is the great villain. These criminals are sexually abused in prison because they transgressed the man-made law of the traffic in women. In fact, women sexually abused inside the family were not, according to the men's rule, sexually available to those men (biological and stepfathers). In other terms, those fathers penetrated into the territory belonging to other men. This means that patriarchy is a scheme of domination-exploitation not only of women by men, but also among men. The concept of gender must be complemented by the concept of patriarchy, once the first one does not give the vector of the process of domination-exploitation then the male primacy must be stressed by the second concept.
Incest is different from incestuous abuse. Incest is committed by two persons whose relationship is not permeated by power. In incestuous abuse, on the contrary, power is pervasive, is always present.
The second research has been carried out since 1994 and it is not yet finished. It covers the capitals of the 26 States, the capital of the country as well as ten cities of the State of São Paulo. The procedure consists in collecting data on domestic violence from a complaint file, going through the police inquiry to the criminal process and the judge or tribunal sentence. Up to now, approximately 300,000 complaint files were investigated all over the country.
Partial data from the State of São Paulo (almost 200,000 complaint files) allow the following provisory conclusions, taking into account that only 1395 police inquiries were examined as well as 849 charge files.
Injury = 87 percent - 12.5% convicted
Rape and other sexual abuse = 6 percent - 7% convicted
Menace = 4 percent - 7% convicted
Intercourse by means of promise of marriage = 1 percent
Mistreatment = 1 percent
Homicide = 1 percent (In fact, femicide)
Injury = 69% - 11% convicted
Menace = 21% - 5% convicted
Rape and other sexual abuse = 4% - 7% convicted
Injury = 85%
Rape and other sexual abuse = 4.5%
Menace = 4%
| Crimes | 1988 | 1992 |
| Injury | 85.0% | 68.0% |
| Rape and other sexual abuse | 4.5% | 4.5% |
| Menace | 4.0% | 21.0% |
It is clear that, with the WPS (125 in the State of São Paulo, 22 of which are in the capital) there is a trend for injury to go down and menace to go up. Between 1988 and 1992 injury decreased 17 points and menace increased the same amount. It means that a number of men stopped beating their wives and started menacing (threatening) them. In December 1995, the law changed and there was a reversal in the situation. Since then, husbands went back to beating, because they do not risk being punished. It is enough to pay a small fine. The law has to be changed since there are cases of women who complained three or even seven times at the WPS and were eventually assassinated by their husbands.
Besides that, WPS have to be improved and their personnel qualified in gender relations. In the State of Rio de Janeiro, in 1994, a colleague of mine and I gave a course about gender violence to policemen. In São Paulo, I lectured, with some colleagues, to 126 women who are heads of WPS about the same theme. Not only policewomen and policemen need to be qualified to deal adequately with gender violence and specifically with domestic violence. Other professionals in the fields of education, health (physical and psychological), social work, and the judiciary should be trained in order to treat women and children victims of violence with respect and efficiency.
The qualitative dimension of the research is being carried out using the tool of semi-structured interviews with policewomen working in WPS and their users (victims of domestic violence).
The first WPS was created in the city of São Paulo, in August 1985. Since then, 124 more WPS were created all over the State of São Paulo. They have played a very important role making domestic violence visible and encouraging women to complain against their (ex)husbands, (ex)companions, (ex)boyfriends. Nobody knows whether domestic violence is increasing in the country or not. Probably, it is because the rate of unemployment is too high (more than 20% of the labor force). Denouncement is increasing and the phenomenon has gained some importance in the media. On the other hand, there are only seven women's shelters in the whole country. It is impossible to protect victims of violence without some kind of secret housing.
Women's Police Stations are only an isolated measure as long as they are not part of a public policy to combat and prevent gender and specifically domestic violence. Domestic violence, largely neglected by the State, is worse than other types of gender violence. Rapes committed by men who are not familiar with their victims are rare. Rapes inside the family and even inside marriage happen everyday against the same victims. The same occurs with beating, humiliation and other forms of domestic violence. This phenomenon has many implications for economic development as well as for physical and mental health.
Rapporteur, Ximena Querol (ILAS)
Several questions arose in this session's discussion . First was whether the growth of domestic violence in Latin America in the 1990s was similar to the growth of other kinds of violence?
Helieth Saffiott respondend that nobody knows, in Brazil, just how large the phenomenon is or if it is increasing. Indeed, she suggested that she was the first one to be doing such a research in order to prove that a policy against domestic violence is needed. Teresa Hernandez suggested that there has been an increase in the number of denunciations for domestic violence. However, this does not necessarily reflect an increase in the number of cases. Instead, it might be the result of anti-domestic violence campaigns that have encouraged women to denounce. Fifteen years ago, the law did not recognize domestic violence as a crime. Women could denounce physical injuries if, as a result of these injuries, they required 10 or more days of medical treatment or medical leave.
A second question was how the death rate in Latin America relates to domestic violence?
Helieth Saffiotti pointed out that according to Nobel Peace Prize winner the economist A. Sen, "100 million women are missing and killed even before they are born". He was referring to selective abortion and the systematic killing of girls in China. It is known that women live much longer than men, in spite of all the mistreatment. We would be a great majority if this phenomenon did not exist.
Helieth Saffiotti was also questioned further about the relationship between domestic violence, unemployment and alcohol. It was suggested that if alcohol were the reason for violence, then violence would be more common in places where one drinks and this is not necessarily the case, because violence emerges in a very limited number of places where one drinks. Moreover, Unemployment is occurring in many other places in the world (besides Latin America) and there is no evidence of a relationship between unemployment and violence. Also, in Spain for example, violence is associated with political issues and not unemployment. it is very complex to construct those chains between unemployment, alcohol and violence. For example, if unemployment implies a modification in the personality of the aggressor, is a socially-constructed personality influenced by unemployment or is aggression increased by other causes? In Saffiotti's view alcohol is not a cause of domestic violence. Nor can one prove a link between unemployment and domestic violence, but she did suggest that the provider role defines masculinity. Men are being "touched" by unemployment and feel they are not a real men if they cannot fulfill their main role. This generates impotence and this is translated into violence. However the data are qualitative and these are largely hypotheses, not statistical facts.
Teresa Hernandez also commented that some factors do appear to increase the risk of domestic violence but are not necessarily causes of domestic violence. These are:
But data show that 80% of aggressors have beaten up their victims when they are sober. According to Peruvian police stations drug/alcohol consumption is not an important element in determining domestic violence.
None of the three factors mentioned, nor the change in family structure, explain domestic violence because domestic violence is older than any one of these. There is a deeper and cultural explanation and it relates to how women and men relate to each other. Men control through violence and women learn to accept it to protect their families.
Saffiotti was asked about the police training she undertook and whether courses on human rights for police are effective. Also, did she find any difference in receptivity to training between men and women? In Rio, she replied, we trained men from the military police and in Sao Paulo, we trained both men and women from the Civil Police. Everyone was receptive, and in Sao Paulo, they wanted to have more courses, at least 2 per semester. But she could not ascertain if the courses changed their behavior since although she had requested that such evaluations take place, there have not been undertaken.
Commented, Elizabeth Sussekind: We need to strengthen the judicial system. The judiciary does not respond appropriately to child abuse. When cases of abused children (that we see in our clinic) are presented to the judge he refuses to accept the complaints alleging that they are not true, and that fathers do not abuse their children. They say that women are bad and are doing this just to fight with their husbands. Even when children talk about the abuse, the judge says that it is "fantasy" and "they get it form TV". We have to change judges' mentalities.
Helieth Saffiotti added that some psychologists don't care either. On September 1897, Freud wrote that women who went to his clinic all complained they were being raped by their fathers. He stated that if he believed the theory of seduction, he would have to denounce all fathers, even his own. She agreed that we have to change judges' mentalities. We used to teach judges in Brazil, and others in the judiciary. Things are improving, slowly, but they are.
One participant commented that one third of deaths due to violence occur inside the home. Another, in contrast, that most murder victims in Sao Paulo are men (93%). Women and children are victims of other kinds of violence. Many people still believe that disciplining children by beating them is okay.
It was suggested that only when there is the political will, will police behavior change. The number of murders increased in Rio when the governor supported a violent policy for the police force. When the policy changed, the number of murders decreased. James Cavallaro pointed out that the number of people killed by the military police in Brazil has decreased since the 1992 peak, although it is unclear how much is a function of programs to increase the awareness of policemen.
Teresa Hernandez was asked whether intra-family rape exists in Peru? Is it that Peru does not conform to the human rights treaties and OAS' norms? Until 1991, rape within a marriage was not considered a crime. But now the law has changed. Rape, whether within a marriage or not, is sanctioned under the penal code. Peru has signed all the treaties in defense of women but it is not clear that they are all respected.
In reference to child abuse, a similar situation to that of Brazil happens goes on in Peru. Children are not seen as a credible source of information, and psychological tests were not taken into account because they were considered "indirect evidence". Women's organizations used several strategies to change this:
1The term "recuperative justice"sought to get the attention of the Criminal Justice System which invariably was not interested in the victim, nor in the isue of compensation for damages caused by domestic violence.
2 Summary edited by Corinne Davis. All footnotes and citations have been omitted. Please contact Dr. Saffioti for a complete list of references.
3 GORDON, Linda. Heroes of Their Own Lives - The Politics and History of Family Violence. USA: Penguin Books, 1989, p. 291.