If there are no effective prevention and re-education programs and aggressors and generators of violence are not treated as they should be, then there will not be a decrease (in crimes)”.
Lydia Cordero Cabrera, director of Casa Amiga Esther Chávez Cano in Ciudad Juárez.
Sexual and family violence are two different problems that equally affect women and girls in our country, which are usually accompanied by stigmatization and revictimization of those affected, to which is added the lack of justice.
From 2015 to January 2022, 328,724 crimes related to sexual violence have been registered, which include sexual abuse; harassment, harassment, simple and equal rape and incest among other crimes that threaten the freedom and sexual security of people, according to figures from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System (SESNSP).
While in 2015 31,408 cases were documented, in 2021, the year with the most complaints of sexual violence, 69,514 investigation files were registered, that is, an increase of 121 percent.
From 2019 to last January, 54% of the total cases (177,258) have been recorded. In January of this year, 4,775 crimes of sexual violence against women were reported in the country.
On the other hand, of the total crimes registered as sexual violence, 34% are rapes, and like most of these crimes, it reached its peak in 2021, accounting for 21,188 inquiries. While in 2015 there were 12,619 cases, that is, this crime grew by 68% in the years mentioned.
5 million victims
In recent years, family violence has increasingly impacted women and girls in Mexico, with up to 5 million possible cases between 2015 and January of this year.
At least one million 332,427 formal complaints have been registered for this crime, plus 4 million 157,298 emergency calls related to incidents of family violence.
Like other crimes, the trend of family violence is increasing. During 2015, the SESNSP had 127,424 investigation folders registered, by 2016 this figure rose to 153,893; in 2017 it was 169,579; 2018 ended with 180,187 complaints.
By 2019 the number of these crimes reached 210,188, while in 2020 it rose to 220,031 and by the end of 2021 the record number of 253,736 formal complaints of family violence was reached. In the first month of this year alone, 17,389 cases were registered.
The foregoing translates, with complete figures per year, into a 100% increase in complaints of family violence, between 2015 and 2021.
Meanwhile, emergency calls for cases of family violence have maintained the same trend since 2016, the year in which 721,771 requests for help to emergency services were recorded. In 2017 the numbers dropped to 689,889; the same as in 2018 at 647,940.
However, for 2019 they increased again to 718,019, in 2020 it was reduced to 689,388 and for 2021 the data reached 690,295 emergency calls for family violence. Last January, 46,538 requests for help were recorded at 911.
Wendy Figueroa Morales, director of the National Shelter Network (RNR), stressed that, during January of this year, more than 560 crimes of family violence were recorded every day, so it is unfortunate that the authorities do not recognize that this crime is the prelude to to femicide, in addition to continuing to minimize acts of family violence when it is right within the family that endless human rights violations are committed.
He recalled that in the same month 1,428 rape crimes against women were registered, 16% more than in January 2021.
“This is just a brushstroke of what happens in Mexico since we remember that the black figure in our country is more than 80% and there are serious gaps in classifying crimes, coupled with the fact that not all women file complaints because they do not believe in the authorities. ”, he stressed.
The activist also lamented that the victims face revictimization, impunity and corruption, the delegitimization of their testimonies, and they are the ones who have to prove that they are victims while the aggressors are free due to the “presumption of innocence.”
Coupled with a tortuous process to access justice that never arrives, which in the best of cases arrives halfway 6 years after the crime. “In Mexico there is no real restitution of rights, much less access to comprehensive justice that implies access to due diligence, comprehensive health, housing, decent employment, the exercise of citizenship,” he said. .
In 2021, 38% of the women who contacted the RNR reported experiencing psychological violence, 24% physical and 9% said they experienced all types of violence, including sexual, economic and patrimonial violence. On average, a woman calls every hour to ask for support. Likewise, 492 women reported femicide violence and four out of every 100 women reported an attempted femicide.
25% of the aggressors of the women who requested support from the RNR had a criminal record; 27% used firearms and 16% had military or political ties, which limited the ability of women to seek help.
Impunity
Lydia Cordero Cabrera, director of the Casa Amiga Esther Chávez Cano organization in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, warned that the issue of impunity in cases of violence against women is very high, noting that in the case of this municipality, impunity goes up to 98 percent.
“There is an impunity throughout this journey that also makes women and girls who decide to file a complaint vulnerable, because many of them live with their aggressor, or are close to him or are partners or ex-partners,” she said.
The activist also lamented that the institutions are overwhelmed to deal with these issues, explaining that in the case of Chihuahua there is a lack of personnel since there are about 9,000 investigation files per year for family violence, and there are only between 10 and 12 Public Ministry agents assigned to the specialized gender prosecutor’s office, which means that each one handles an average of 700 to 800 files per year in the entity.
“Humanly possible it is not. And only in the crime of family violence (…) you can imagine the burden, the cases are not being handled, they are not being attended to,” she stressed.
The director of Casa Amiga commented that it has been identified that when family or intimate partner violence reaches their daughters, it is part of the trigger for women to ask for help. In addition to reaching a depressive point with a disorder that goes beyond their personality and makes them hit rock bottom.
She narrated that cases of women who have survived a suicide have come to the association and who even tried to kill their children in the midst of the violence they experience, under the thought that they would not continue to suffer the attacks.
“If there are no effective prevention and re-education programs and aggressors and generators of violence are not treated as they should be, then there will not be a decrease (in crimes).”