8M. The drama of vicarious violence

Aggression exerted on daughters and sons, with the intention of causing psychological harm to the mother. The actions and attitudes that are usually used. Deficits in the institutional and judicial sphere.

Hugo Guzman. Journalist. “The century”. Santiago. 8/3/2024. It is a topic that is little talked about and about which little is known.

However, it has to do with one of the negative realities that women experience around the world and that is also linked to their daughters and sons.

It is about vicarious violence. Which is defined as that exercised on daughters and sons, with the intention of causing psychological harm to the woman. And it is conceived as another form of gender violence.

Lucía Núñez, from the Center for Research and Gender Studies (CIEG) of the UNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico), indicated that vicarious violence “means violating through a person, in this case daughters, sons and shadowto harm the mother, that is, there is a means through which it is perpetuated, it is not direct.”

There are studies that indicate that 90% of daughters and sons of women who suffered gender violence from their husbands or partners were affected by vicarious violence. This includes psychological violence exercised towards mothers.

Several cases and studies show a tragic situation. That the materialization of vicarious violence has reached the murder of a daughter or son with the intention of hurting, of “punishing” the mother.

In a text published on the Web Portal of the Library of National Congress, it was explained that “vicarious violence is a concept coined and defined in 2012 by Sonia Vaccaro, Argentine clinical psychologist and judicial expert, expert in victimology and violence against women, his daughters and sons; such as that violence against the mother that is exercised on the daughters and sons with the intention of harming her through an intermediary person. In this sense, vicarious violence is secondary violence to the main victim, who is the woman, since the abuser knows that harming the sons/daughters is ensuring that the damage reaches the woman in the most cruel way, without the possibility of control on her part.”

Entities from several countries and analysis from the United Nations and other international organizations point out that vicarious violence is exercised in meeting spaces between the father and his daughters and sons where the aim is to discredit the mother, generate a bad opinion about the maternal family, exercise violence gender in the presence of minors, establishing that the woman does not fulfill her responsibility as a mother, uttering insults and accusations against the mother in the presence of the boys or girls, implementing threats to take away the daughters or sons and to get them the mother does not see them, does not comply with medical treatments for minors to cause a problem for the mother, does not comply with days and times for pick-up or delivery of the daughters or sons based on what was agreed when there is a separation or divorce, generating situations of fear and uncertainty in children, mistreating, hitting, injuring and even killing the daughter or son with the aim of hurting the mother.

There are reports and analyzes that show that vicarious violence can be exercised by a woman against a father.

In an interview with LatFem, psychologist Sonia Vaccaro pointed out that “we are in vicarious violence today as we were at the beginning of gender violence” and added that “when the woman proposes separation, when divorce occurs and, especially, when the woman forms a new partner”, vicarious violence usually appears.

In a testimony published on GlobalUnamTV, Mildret Sainz Torres, 42, activist and mother of a 22-year-old woman and a 17-year-old boy who were taken from her at a very young age by their father, declared that “we are mothers who do not We know about our children and that hits you hard emotionally, it’s torture. The objective of those who exercise this violence is to kill you while you are alive and, if they do not achieve this, they make you dead for your sons and daughters.” She said that “I began to suffer vicarious violence when my baby was a few months old. He tried not to notice that she was attacking me directly, but he always told me that, if I left, I would do it alone, without my children, because he was not going to allow them to grow up without their father.

The researcher Lucía Núñez expressed that another form of vicarious violence is when the man exercises “economic violence, not providing food or school materials. Also, limiting the pension, if there is one, to what is assigned by the judges, which, in most cases, is insufficient. The abuser thinks that he is harming the mother, but in reality he also ends up violating the children. “There are extreme cases where boys and girls are injured or killed with the sole purpose of hurting the woman.”

Lawyer Patricia Leiva expressed that “the objective in exercising vicarious violence is control and dominance over women, only to demonstrate possession in a power relationship that is based on inequality. Unfortunately, these children suffer irreparable damage and are victims of childhood violence, because vicarious violence is not made visible.”

The institutional and judicial work

A situation that is little addressed at the international level, less so in Latin American, African, and Asian nations.

Few countries show progress like that of Spain, in 2015, which in the Organic Law of Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence, established that “vicarious violence is a form of sexist violence. The sons and daughters of women victims of gender violence, as well as the minor girls and boys subject to their guardianship, guardianship and custody, are direct victims of this type of violence.”

Lawyer Patricia Leiva stated that in the case of Chile, in the face of vicarious violence, “the error is that justice sees violence separately,” and established that in the country “when cases related to personal care or direct and regular relationship of the children, there is no legal norm that prevents the aggressor convicted of domestic violence against the mother from requesting these rights, which reveals the lack of protection to which children and adolescents of our country, who are not considered at any time as victims of violence.”

In a text from the Antonia Foundation it is indicated that “in Chile, vicarious violence is not expressly recognized.” There is information that this matter is in the legislative process and could be added to the articles referring to domestic violence. Furthermore, vicarious violence is not classified as a crime.

Lorena Astudillo, lawyer and member of the Chilean Network Against Violence against Women, said in the newspaper La Tercera that “it works in isolation and is typified based on other classifications, but not vicarious violence. So if a child has physical aggression or psychological abuse, it is considered like this; psychological abuse in the context of domestic violence and the effects that this has on the mother of the minor are not considered. The legislation is light years away from thinking that there are acts that are intended to violate a woman. They can say that there is sexual abuse, physical violence, injuries in the context of domestic violence, but never that this could be an instrumentalization to harm the mother of that child.”

At the time, a study from the University of Concepción was known based on consultations with 239 women who had been victims of gender violence and it was noted that 54 were victims of psychological, economic, physical and sexual attacks by the father of their daughters. and children in common. It was also indicated that only 1.3% of the children of women who were victims of gender violence were reported as victims of this phenomenon.

Empar Aguado, in The Conversation, maintained that “there are many expert voices who denounce that in judicial practice gender violence continues to be separated from certain actions perpetrated against minors, with the exception of those cases in which Because of their cruelty and transcendence, said connection becomes more easily verifiable.”

And he asserted that “in the face of the obstacles that the laws and justice impose on them, men who exercise abuse through these practices seek to continue practicing violence on their partner or ex-partner through the most vulnerable link: their sons and daughters.”

A dramatic issue that, everything indicates, will tend to persist and that demands social and institutional attention and considerations in the judicial field.