The denunciation by women victims of male violence is fundamental to guarantee the effectiveness of all the resources provided for in Organic Law 1/2004, of December 28, on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence, which has now been approved for two decades.
This is evidenced by María Ángeles Artiles Navarro, from the Judicial Police Organization Unit (UOPJ), Civil Guard Crimes Team, and Patricia Talens Hernández, agent of the VioGén Team of the Civil Guard Neighbourhood Company (Gran Canaria), who encourage women to report cases of abuse to which they may be subjected.
María Ángeles Artiles and Patricia Talens lead the third installment of the series of interviews with experts in the police and judicial field that the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands has carried out to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the approval of Organic Law 1/2004, in which they have also interviewed María Auxiliadora Díaz Velázquez, judge of the Violence against Women Court number 2 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Carlos Tallón Díaz, Chief Inspector of the Family Care Service of the Provincial Brigade of the Judicial Police of Las Palmas (UFAM) of the National Police.
“If you don’t report it won’t give you visibility. And if there is a problem and it is not reported, the problem is going to get bigger. Violence is never going to go away. It’s going to be a snowball, it’s always going to get bigger. The violence is escalating. It goes from a smaller level to a larger level”, warns the agent of the VioGén Team of the Civil Guard of Gran Canaria.
Patricia Talens, who works within the Team VioGén (A system put in place by the State in 2007 to allow for the rapid, comprehensive and effective monitoring and protection of abused women, and their sons and daughters), explains that not all cases of gender-based violence are the same, sometimes there is an aggravation of the situation very quickly and other times there are episodes that increase the severity little by little.
“When they are very slow, sometimes it is worse, because you get used to it, you normalize and assume a victim role,” he adds. Rarely is the criminal act a slap without a previous one. When this is the case, the girl denounces and realizes that this is not right. But when it begins to diminish her freedom, to coerce her, to move her away from her environment and so on, that is very difficult to get to her, because she has already normalized that situation. And let’s not say if she is based on a family environment that, maybe, also does not favor her being an empowered woman.”
In this sense, María Ángeles Artiles emphasizes that in the Civil Guard the “central axis has always been the help to the victim” and encourages to denounce because there are sufficient specialists and sufficient tools to offer comprehensive protection to the woman and her sons and daughters, thanks, among other things, to the approval of the Organic Law twenty years ago and the existence of units such as the Woman-Minor Team (EMUME).
“The approval was an important step forward. It was new because it marked a change and specified what gender violence was, with a comprehensive approach. Apart from providing criminal remedies, there was a range of many more remedies. Specifically, the Civil Guard also had many significant changes. They changed protocols of action, specialized the staff, there was a lot of information, sensitized all the components of the Civil Guard,” he says.
However, as a member of the Civil Guard of the Crimes against Persons Team, he highlights the importance of training and information for members of the Security Forces and Corps and the need to continue providing human and material resources for police protection in the area of gender violence.
For her part, Patricia Talens highlights the change in Spanish society that has occurred in the last twenty years in terms of her awareness of gender violence, but recognizes that in the non-urban environments in which the Civil Guard works, there are still social barriers.
In non-urban environments, “the nuclei are smaller and everyone knows each other,” he says. There are many women who still have internalized the ‘I’m ashamed, I don’t want them to know…’ Then it’s perhaps a little harder to get there and make them understand that it’s no shame. That they are not the ones who have to feel shame, in that case they would be the aggressors, not them.”