On average, five women file a complaint of gender violence every day, in the capital Córdoba alone. Everyone has the right to be assisted upon arrival at the police station and to be accompanied by a lawyer. He Cordoba Bar (ICA) has a pool of nearly 400 professionals specialized in this change of Violence against Women, lawyers who will technically lead this process and who will support the victim in their change of life beyond the technical level; Often, they are your essential moral support in these moments.
Emilia Barragán, member of this office to combat gender violence since 2019 at ICA Córdoba, told ABC. Barragán insists that this specialized service allows us to know first-hand that “little by little there is awareness in this matter”, even if “it differs greatly depending on the generation. “Many women over the age of fifty or sixty engage in normalized behaviors that constitute crimes.”
For this lawyer, the wall that lawyers encounter is that they assume a great psychological burden; Lawyers are often responsible for removing the blindfold from victims and other times, on the other hand, putting their foot on the wall and explaining to women that not everything is violence, sometimes it’s just a misunderstanding and that needs to be said too.
These problems also include stopping the possible abuse of guarantees that women have. The biggest advantage that these lawyers see in moving the violence to Córdoba is having the 24-hour custody court, “which works phenomenally and immediately allows the woman to return home with provisional measures such as a restraining order. “They no longer have to sleep with their attacker.”
The next morning, the process continues and the case goes to the Women’s Violence Court where “you already know you’re not going to come home to eat.” The subject is sensitive, we must give the victim time to testify and it is not easy,” said the lawyer, who added that “it would be necessary to one more judge because uncomfortable situations are created, such as delays in reporting the victim because they may break down and collapse. You can leave at five in the afternoon, if they give you an appointment at 11 in the morning,” explains Barragán.
In this specialized instance, the decision is most of the time rendered after a quick trial. The public prosecutor sends out his letter “and you leave with a sentence and measures adopted; and if there is no agreement, if the Violence Court considers it necessary to carry out further procedures, the case is brought before the Criminal Court 6.
The lawyer points out that also in this case the sentences are generally not long. For example, a case received by a guard on August 23 was given a speedy trial. two weeks laterwhere the provisional measures condemning the aggressor were ratified.
For this lawyer, the greatest collapsein addition to the court investigating the case, is in the Criminal Court 6 because all the cases of gender violence that emanate from the rest of the courts in the province arrive there.
In the context of the change of office, what lawyer Mar Mignorance experienced was that “not all judges of the Guard have the right same sensitivity“. There is a big difference, comment these two lawyers, with the Violence Court, accustomed and specific to this case, where the judge – in this case a female judge – establishes a criterion and follows a model. But the duty court “depends on what day it’s your turn.”
These lawyers emphasize that it is increasingly difficult to “file a complaint.” Often, you arrive at the police station and you are told that what this woman says about her husband is that he is a bad husband but it is not violence. Mingorance gives as an example the case of one of its clients who was a victim of abuse, to whom the police “did not file a complaint” and then the gender violence global assessment units (UVIVG), after having analyzed, concluded that there was violence of all kindsincluding economic and heritage. In this case, “her husband took the food off the table, telling her not to eat, that she was fat.”
Revictimization
Mingorance emphasizes that once the phase of filing a complaint with the police has passed, the woman undergoes a moment of revictimization. Sometimes, in the custody court, there are “female phobia” by magistrates who do not grant banning orders.
In this sense, this public defender asks for more preparation of judges and greater empathy with the victims because you have to put yourself in their place, because “getting there, taking this step, is not at all easy”, concludes the lawyer.
