“My infant son was arbitrarily taken from me one year and three months ago at a police station, knowing that seven months earlier, I had denounced my ex-partner for a serious case of domestic violence.”
Every day there are many cases I receive about serious complaints of alleged corruption that are presented both in Family Police Stations and in the Family Welfare Institute of Bogotá and Medellín. As a result of arbitrary decisions, women abruptly lose their children, many of them barely months old, even in the lactating stage, without any control to date.
The most outrageous thing, as some of them mentioned to me, is that these types of decisions are made without taking into account previous complaints that these women have made for domestic violence against their ex-partners, and even so, these entities decide to favor the aggressor with custody of minors, as is the case of Emiliana Yepes, who denounces negligence on the part of these entities.
“My infant son was arbitrarily taken from me one year and three months ago at a police station in Medellín, knowing that seven months earlier, I had denounced my ex-partner for domestic violence in Bogotá. Despite this, he denounced me, and from a victim I became a perpetrator, filed a complaint with the Attorney General’s Office, and the Usaquén Family Police Station where I was never summoned to a hearing and I only found out that they had summoned me to notify me of a ruling that sentenced me for domestic violence and to file legal remedies.” Emiliana assures.
Apart from vicarious violence, these women are also victims of Institutional Violence, since once they go to the Family Commissioners in search of justice, what they find is disrespectful and inhumane treatment by their officials.
“I’ve been going around for a year and no entity has wanted to spread knowledge, they don’t want to get their hands dirty, I feel like I can’t take it anymore, my baby needs me, he cries and screams when I leave, I can see him every two months in a room in the drive him with surveillance. Colombia is in an emergency due to gender violence, in addition to being a victim of vicarious violence is to be at extreme risk of femicide”. Emiliana concludes in tears.
But what is vicarious violence?
It is understood as situations in which some type of aggression is going to be carried out on a person or in substitution of another, which would be the true objective, or in a collateral way. The motivation is usually associated with revenge. In practice, this occurs above all in family contexts, and that is why, in general terms, it is considered to be a form of intrafamily violence. The cases of those who harm their sons or daughters to harm an ex are especially serious, a phenomenon that has even given rise to scandals such as the murder of children at the hands of their father or mother. Circumstances that in Bogotá are becoming more and more common, so it is necessary to set off the alarms.
According to the statistical bulletin issued by the National Reference Center Group on Violence (Gcern) of the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, only in the first quarter of 2023, 11,491 cases of intrafamily violence were registered in which the victim was a woman, against 3,494 in which the affected person was a man.
Despite the fact that in these cases it cannot be established whether vicarious violence existed, precisely because it is not typified in the country’s legal system and therefore there is no record, as mentioned by the representative, it is very likely that it was committed. that behavior in many of those events.
On the other hand are the figures of the Colombian Foundation Against Vicarious Violence. According to the records of this organization, so far in 2023 at least 517 women have approached to request help for being victims of this type of violence. Most of them found complaints from citizens who had their children taken away arbitrarily; Only in four cases was it possible to recover the minors.
Another of the reprehensible cases is that of Martha, an older woman who, after the death of her daughter due to cancer, dedicated herself to caring for her granddaughter, however, she also became another victim of Vicarious Violence as a result of alleged cases of corruption in Family Police Stations. Custody of her granddaughter was awarded to her father, who, according to her, never took an interest in the girl, until he learned of a pension left by her mother before she died.
“My girl was taken from me, all due to a dubious procedure of the Usme sectional ICBF. The defender of this center said that all her rights were being violated, and they dared to go to her school to get her out to give it to her father, all because she is now a guarantor of the pension she left my daughter. For weeks after this happened, I have not seen her again. Martha told me with a lot of anger and frustration.
According to Martha, the custody assignment process has been quite irregular and arbitrary, and she has also become a victim of institutional violence since, according to officials, being the minor’s grandmother means nothing for her to assume custody. “Every time she went to ask for answers, they mistreated me in the worst way, they made me feel like a criminal.” Martha points out.
According to experts, although the trigger for the aggressions can be very different depending on the case, behind vicarious violence there can be a deep feeling of inferiority and lack of self-worth, which generates frustration in the abuser that is discharged aggressively through of violence on others. For the most part, the aggressor tends to seek dominance and the exercise of power through the submission of both his partner and the infants, feeling like an authoritarian figure and enjoying obedience and control of the situation with which he tries to compensate. your insecurities. Sometimes violent behaviors can be aggravated or triggered during drunken states or alterations of consciousness.
It is evident that from control bodies such as the Attorney General’s Office and the Prosecutor’s Office it is urgent to carry out an in-depth review of hundreds of cases that have been truncated over the years without anything happening. Dozens of children are growing up in the midst of a tragedy that does not correspond to them, drastically affecting their mental health and that of their mothers.
As Councilor of Bogotá, I make a forceful call to the authorities to thoroughly review the behavior of these entities, since, apparently, they have forgotten that the well-being of children must prevail. An injustice, it is not solely and exclusively a matter of gender. There is a violation, in this case, of the rights of a child, a mother, a woman.