Wednesday, April 10, El Prat. Roberto, a 43-year-old industrial engineer, murders his wife, 42, and his two 8-year-old twin children, a boy and a girl. He leaves a note of forgiveness. He then throws himself onto the train tracks and commits suicide. The autopsy of the victims reveals that they died strangled with a noose or some type of belt or scarf.
The triple crime in El Prat is being investigated as a case of sexist violence. The duty judge of El Prat, in fact, recused himself in favor of the gender violence magistrate, who is in charge of directing the work of the police.
There is secrecy of summary. The researchers do not speak. Nobody talks. Only the brother of the murdered woman. When she says goodbye to journalist Mayka Navarro, she says about her brother-in-law: “He was a very good person, a good husband and an excellent father. The thing is that he had depression.”
As numerous events demonstrate, in the privacy of a home situations can occur that are not reported and are suffered in silence. The research will tell. But great care must be taken to justify this heinous crime in the murderer's depression, which is what it is. Mental health is often used as an argument by deniers of sexist violence. Excuses for abuse are common because in our society, there are those who see abuse as an impulse of the male gender that is stronger than themselves. As if the victim were the man. Relying on the mental illness of the aggressor as an exculpation means forgetting the real victims.
Sexist violence is not suffered, it is made to suffer. Nor is it the result of an uncontrollable instinct, but of a man's conscious decision to harm a woman with whom he has a relationship – and sometimes also his children – because he can and because he wants to.
It is inevitable to wonder why Roberto did not commit suicide rather than kill his family. The statements of the victim's brother fuel doubts. Did he think the best solution was for everyone to die? Did Roberto believe that he was saving them because they would be helpless if he disappeared? It's hard to even write it.
This newspaper sought answers to these questions. We pass them on to the experts. In his opinion, only sexist violence would explain why he did not leave the woman alive, but not the children, if he was afraid of leaving them helpless. She was an adult person with resources to get by without him.
Since 2003, 1,255 women have died from sexist violence. Yesterday another crime was confirmed. This year, ten women and seven children have been murdered by the father. If the attackers were good people, hell is full of them.
