Patricia Hortel, the prosecutor who is working on the prosecution for the murder of Rocío González in the town of Saladillo, Buenos Aires, gave an interview after the arrest of the alleged murderer, in which she focused on the victim. The statements generated controversy and some sectors have requested her separation from the case.
We share a text by the lawyer María Mara Martín on this issue.
The prosecutor of Saladillo said some truths that should be heard if we want to have fewer femicides.
It is more than obvious that the prosecutor in the case of the crime of Rocío Gonzáles should not have said what she said. It seems very appropriate that she should be removed from the case. But it is also appropriate to listen to her, because in the midst of everything she should not have said, she said very valuable things. But it’s easier to cancel her, to request that she be put out of work, to destroy her, instead of asking her what she means by what she says.
The civil service and some feminist currents have developed a paternalistic attitude towards women all over the world, they are the new and efficient representatives of patriarchy, considering women as beings incapable of thinking for themselves, incapable of making the right decisions so as not to be at the scene of crimes. As if women have nothing to do with what happens to us. And that is not true.
The argument that it is men and society as a whole who need to be educated, not women, is a kind of magical thinking, which they want to apply to us young women, that we don’t know why what happens to us happens to us and that instead of running for our lives we are supposed to stay at home, waiting to see if the police or the murderer arrives first.
To make analysis we should focus on the typical cases, the woman who is killed by her partner or ex-partner, which is the most avoidable and yet the most numerous. We cannot prevent attacks by strangers, rapes in the street, the large number of murders of young women who, without imagining the possibility, are attacked by the doorman of the building or by a mob or by a killer on the loose. But we can prevent our partner or ex-partner from being a murderer who will end up killing us, and that is what the prosecutor was talking about when she said that we have to change, we have to re-educate ourselves.
In this case, the prosecutor was doubly wrong, because Rocío had not chosen or decided on a relationship with her perpetrator. But Hortel had the urge to say something and said it at the wrong time. Because of her position and function, she had the opportunity to express her views earlier, in places of discussion, in academia and the media, and in this way, she would have given a new look at femicides, which would probably contribute to the beginning of a new stage, in which we can really do something to prevent them.
Saving lives
First of all, she is right when she says that there is something that women bring (I repeat, this is not the case with Rocío) to the relationships in which they are then killed. It is true that men choose their victims and that not all women will consent to be chosen. Being a battered woman is prior to the encounter with the batterer. Not all women will lend themselves to these relationships. But there is a group, a very large group, and here again I find the prosecutor’s words quite right, who have a formation which means that instead of running away at the first sign that the man is a danger, they develop infinite mechanisms of justification and tolerance.
Just as violent men know how to choose their victims, we should know how to choose who we associate with. If we start by saying that he is very jealous because he is in love, that he controls my phone and my clothes and everything I do because he feels insecure, because his mother didn’t give him the boob, or that he says that all my friends are stupid and that my family doesn’t love him, because with the previous woman he had friends who were against him, and other infinite stupidities, we start to stay on the violent man’s side. Afterwards, when we want to flee, several things happen, he thinks he is our master and gets used to subjugating us, we are already afraid of him, we are left alone. The cursed circle is already established.
If when we barely know him, instead of paying attention to the danger signs, we believe that nothing can happen to us because we are better, more intelligent, more understanding than other women, we let valuable time go by. Because if we don’t bond with him, he won’t be obsessed with us. But we feel sorry for him, because we realise that he is a poor bastard, we like him sexually, because adrenaline is pumping through his pores, we really want to be with someone, to have a partner, to start a family.
After all, what does it cost us to change the way we dress a little, to stop spending so much time with our friends, if now we already have someone who accompanies us all the time, because if there is something that the future hitters know how to do, it is to be there all the time, always attentive, always on top, the fulfilled dream of finding a man who lives for and with us.
If all this were a delirium, someone explain what a woman in a relationship with a guy who the first day they went out told her that he had hit another woman, what a woman does with a guy who thinks that all women are whores, who has children from another marriage and doesn’t see them or feed them, what a woman does with a guy who is a victim of everything and can’t talk about his feelings and gets angry for anything and ruins her birthdays and all the parties. I could make an endless list of signs that should be taken into account, but they are overlooked in the pursuit of a romantic love that we can surely build if we are good enough.
I repeat, this is not the case of the Saladillo femicide, although it could even be said that if what happened to Rocío happens to a woman, the best thing she can do is not to go to work anymore, to go and live with a relative for a while, to give up everything in exchange for her life. Because if you were with this guy for a year and a half, maybe you had enough time and data to imagine that one day he was going to end up doing you serious harm. But nobody tells you to run for your life, they say to call 144. Nobody says it’s better to leave everything, to hide, to get to safety, they say you’re right, that you have rights, that there are enough laws to protect you. None of that is good for you, the only thing that is good for you is to be alive.
When they ask her questions like why you kept going to work, Rocío, being so young, you could have started another life somewhere else, the cries appear about how it is the murderer who is responsible for everything and that we have the right to live our lives in peace, without harassment or pressure. The victim should not be held responsible. That’s all true, that’s all very well. But if a woman realises that she is in danger, she would have to make every effort to get out of it. It is clear that there are no rights, no laws, no ministries that can save you, if you know you are in danger you have to do anything to protect yourself, not trust others who will save your life from their offices.
Clericalism
This is also where the cancellations begin, the blocking of any discussion that starts from an idea different from the current paradigms, especially on the part of women who live from their work as feminists and instead of seriously thinking about why we continue to lay the corpses, they dedicate themselves to providing us with free sanitary towels. We don’t have to accept everything the prosecutor says, but why should we accept everything she says, a minister who today seems to have an unwavering commitment to women and tomorrow, because she has seen another vein in which politics can be more profitable, denounces the same women she defended yesterday because they go to the marches with their children.
The prosecutor in her sloppy speeches said things that should be listened to. In short, what she said is that the public policies that have been implemented so far do not protect women or prevent femicides. He made it clear that precautionary measures are useless, that telling a murderer that he must not approach his victim is almost a joke, that giving her a panic button does not protect anyone, which has been amply proven with all the women who died without even having time to reach out their hands. He said that neither the police, nor the justice of the peace, nor the criminal justice system, if they have a long holiday in between, will have time to take any measures to protect the victim. He said that in this country they allow anyone to have a gun if they do not have a criminal conviction against them. He said that it is difficult to reconcile the rights of alleged victims with the rights of the accused.
The latter deserves an aside. We must ask ourselves how the same person functions when his daughter is harassed and the accused is not immediately arrested and when it is his son who is accused and without any procedure to determine his guilt, for example, he is locked up. And the prosecutor asks her how do I make it to mediate the dangerousness of a subject?
This is something we should discuss. But in order to discuss it, many civil servants and professionals who live from working on these issues and giving lectures and courses should not be afraid of losing their privileges and their comfort zones. People who know and decide should be able to imagine, for a moment, that they might be wrong.
The stigma
Another aspect of the problem is that batterers, rapists and femicides are men, who were not born with that stigma. They are people, just as much victims of the system as women, they too were put in their heads how things should be and they were not taught anything that would help them learn to live differently, but they were not found when they were 15, 16 years old, they are not even connected the first time a woman denounces them, which would already be very easy.
Even without minimising all the responsibility they have for their actions, we have to take care of them, at least look at them. But no, men are left to their own devices. They are not attended to, they are not diagnosed. National and international laws, protocols for the prevention of violence, do not even mention them. As if they were Martians who come from somewhere to beat up a woman and then vanish.
When someone raises in forums, debates, round tables and the millions of meetings and talks that are organised to talk about violence, that something must be done with men, what they say is that men are not our problem, that it is they themselves who must develop the public policies, the ambits, the strategies, for themselves. The wolves must learn by themselves to stop being wolves and we, the sheep, must continue to lay the carcasses until they learn.
We have to take things seriously if we want to end femicides, abandon magical thinking, teach girls not to hang out with violent guys, to make them safe and take care of the men problem. We have to take care of men, as well as continuing to do everything that is already being done for women. We have to stop lecturing and try to prevent femicides.
For example, the first time a woman reports an act of abuse, harassment, violence of any kind, we have to intervene, making a clear diagnosis of the dangerousness of the subject, resolving the question that the prosecutor asks how to know which man is capable of killing a woman and which is not. Of course, nothing is going to give us complete certainty, but for example, there is a three-spot test called the Zulliger test, which is widely used in job interviews, which is taken in two hours and analysed in another two. In that test you can see quite clearly the salient characteristics of the subject and we can be sure that being able to pick up a knife and cut another person to pieces is a strong enough characteristic to jump out in the test. There are a number of questions and investigations, which are already being done in some provinces, which together with the test could tell us in 4 or 5 hours, with a good approximation, if a man is dangerous.
And if we conclude that he is dangerous, even if we cannot imprison him for that, we can at least keep an active eye on him, even if it means putting a policeman by his side all day long, why not, while the institutions take care of him, in mutual help groups, with individual treatment, in whatever way is considered best, because that is what the professionals will be there for.
Anything but leaving alone, to his own devices, a guy who we already know is quite capable of killing his wife. There are even dual anklets, which are placed on both partners and which sound an alarm in the control centres and ring on the anklets themselves, when they come within 1000 metres of each other. The fact that the woman’s alarm starts sounding when her assailant is within 1000 metres clearly allows her to leave with all the children to a neighbour’s house, to disappear, to take refuge until the police arrest the assailant.
The response
Why is this kind of thing not done? First of all because the Ministry of Women’s Affairs takes care of women, that they have wipes and training courses so that in the future they have more economic autonomy, they take care of training in gender ideology, in making discrimination against minorities visible, in making laws and more laws, which all say the same thing. All of this is very commendable and necessary, but we need to allocate some of the budget to take some measures to prevent femicides.
Of course, everything that has been developed so far is very valuable, the precautionary measures are an achievement, but they do not work for all cases. Even in the reform of the Penal Code that is in Congress, new measures are incorporated that are really interesting, hopefully, even if the new code is not approved, they can be implemented. There are and there will be new tools, other tests can be designed, other types of approaches can be developed, but what we cannot do is continue to talk about violence against women as a cultural issue, which will be resolved when society as a whole change, when we have murderers hanging around their victims’ houses. We have to change society, without a doubt, and that is what is being done, but the changes will come in 20 or 30 years, and in the meantime, we have to take concrete measures because women will continue to die.
Another issue, which is very painful to deal with, is the family and the environment of the victims. If they knew they were being beaten, why didn’t they protect them, but seriously, by not allowing them to continue with the relationship, even if they say they want to continue? Lock them up, don’t leave them alone for a moment, set up big protection groups, surround them all the time. Do something, whatever you can, but don’t let the killer find them alone in the house, or wherever, defenseless, vulnerable.
All those people who have the time and the desire to go out on the streets, for days on end, to ask for revenge, who believe that if they get the murderers life imprisonment they have done their duty, they have to organise themselves before they kill her, be on the streets before, surround the woman’s house, design mechanisms of care, put photos of the guy everywhere so that if anyone sees him they can call the police. Taking care of women before they are dead would be a really valuable paradigm shift. The dad of that girl with the 130 stab wounds said he knew he was beating her, there is always someone who knows. Let’s do something, something valuable, more valuable than requesting life imprisonment. Social care is something we didn’t learn to practice.
There are thousands of cases, like that of Anahí Benítez, for example, which we could talk about for hours and hours, a femicide that began at least a year before without anyone batting an eyelid. A 14-year-old girl, pregnant, alone with her soul, exposed, unarmed, unprotected. And in this world of femicides in which there is insufficient prior care, there is after a terrible thirst for revenge, which is perhaps the way to silence one’s own guilt for what could have been done and was not done.
This is also supported, promoted and encouraged by feminists and civil servants. Punitiveness, condemnation, let them rot in jail. Completely forgetting that the other is also someone who deserves a better life. And they boast about getting these 50-year sentences, which are also like death, when we could suppose that if we did other things, like improving the prison system so that prisoners have medical and psychological care, have time to think and improve themselves, have help to do so, even femicides could come to life a few years after and be people who are not going to kill anyone else. And this is also true in cases that are not femicides. Does anyone think that if rugby players had 10 years of professional help, when they got out, after that time, they would kick a kid to death again?
By the way, if we changed the prison system, if we did what we had to do, we would also prevent the guys who take a knife and kill their ex-wife the next day from going out on the streets, just like that, because their sentence is up. Because their sentence is over, maybe 25 years, without having had adequate treatment, supervision, help and especially diagnoses that indicate that they are going to continue killing.
We need to change public policies, personal behaviour, women’s reveries with romantic love, men’s frustrations that lead them to need to dominate their wives. That is budgets, courage, the development of new tools, early approaches, thinking of everyone as human beings who deserve help. Stop thinking of women as the poor victims who can’t avoid living with batterers and men as animals who don’t even deserve to be tested to see if they could kill someone when they’ve had their first punch. Knowing this, we can better protect women and we can work with men on treatment to help them stop. Women should not be left alone, but neither should men, let them kill no more, if we are sure that they will rot in prison.
