Since the Argentine psychologist Sonia Vaccaro coined the term vicarious violence in 2012, more than 50 children have been murdered in Spain. Killing a child is the most extreme way to harm the mother. Also make it disappear, explains Vaccaro, who has analyzed it in her latest book Vicarious Violence. Hitting where it hurts more than 400 cases. She says that at the end of 2021, when they concluded the study, it was already seen that vicarious violence was increasing.
A little over a decade has passed since he coined the term. How do you see the situation?
We have made progress, because we have been able to give it a name, although very slowly. Including it in the law will also provide impetus for its end, because vicarious violence cannot exist without the support of the institutions. The creatures are still being killed and torn away.
Are cases increasing because there are not enough tools?
My hypothesis is that the dangerousness of an individual has been dissociated and it has been considered that they can be dangerous for the mother but not for the children. These have been left exposed, without any type of protection. In Spain, Organic Law 8/2021 already tells judges that they must protect creatures and place a restraining order.
It does?
Not yet even though it is said that visits and shared or full custody should be suspended. We have seen cases of individuals convicted of gender violence who had custody of their children. For me it is nonsense.
The lawyer for the mother of Leo, the two-year-old boy murdered by his father in 2021, commented that the law allows measures to be taken with evidence, but that it is not done.
It is being applied, but the law says “unless the judge considers…”. By leaving that margin, the patriarchal collective imagination still survives: thinking that an abuser can be a good father. The laws must be changed and also the mentality of society and those who apply the law. We're not talking about father. Fathering a child is not being a father... We still lack a great social reflection to understand that if we see that an individual is dangerous for the mother, he is dangerous. Spot.
In the most extreme cases the father kills the children, but is there vicarious violence in apparently civilized separations?
Yes. Mothers want to report, but they say they do not find an echo in the courts.
Can you give examples?
Reckless behavior towards children. Interrupt treatments for chronic diseases, modify the routine established in living with the mother, make the child return to the mother's house without the seat belt so that she sees him and suffers. Sometimes they tell me “what am I complaining about with this!?” And if there are no children or they are older, they can use close relatives and even pets to harm the woman. Children are taken as objects. An abuser is not a father. That should be clear to all of us and especially to those who have the power or power to modify these cases from occurring.
Are attitudes of this type more normalized than what we believe?
Yes. And what we see, not only in the courts, but in all the institutions that intervene in a divorce with violence towards the mother, is that behaviors that prevent contact with the mother when they are with him are minimized. For example, not letting them know where they are going on vacation, that the mother cannot have access to the children, sending reckless messages about murdering children while the children are in his care... We see it almost daily in consultations with women. victims of violence.
Are children protected in separation processes?
What I have seen in so many years of experience is that separations, even when there is violence, are resolved as a conflict between adults. And the creatures are divided as if it were another common property. Children don't count and they are the ones who suffer. Everyone speaks for their best interests, but they have no voice. They are not heard even though the law says they should be heard. Judges who do so are an exception. There has been a widespread discourse that if the father is rejected it is because the mother has wronged him: the famous and false parental alienation syndrome, which is a form of vicarious violence. If the creature says the opposite of what you want to hear, it is said that they are manipulated. And a path begins in which they are even forcibly torn from their environment without caring at all. And I say starting because sometimes it is done using public force. That is very traumatic for the creatures. They are forcibly taken to live with someone they have expressed that they are afraid of.
In the book he talks about Federico, an Italian boy who didn't want to go with his father...
And he ended up murdered at a meeting point.
Is adult-centered justice a general problem in the world?
Absolutely. It belongs to the patriarchal system, to consider the paterfamilias as an omnipotent center regardless of what he is like, who he is... When a child rejects his father because he has seen him scream or has even hit him or his mother, the father is never investigated. The mother is blamed, saying that she manipulates and the child is punished. This is exactly the sequence in the patriarchal system in which we live, which is more than 5,000 years old.
The courts do nothing without a complaint from the mother, the lawyers explain.
It is important that campaigns are carried out in which the environment is committed. If we see a rape or a robbery, everyone calls the police. Why, if we see the mistreatment of a child, are we not able to report it? People look the other way. It is logical that an abused woman is afraid of her attacker... but the environment could denounce it and it seems to me that not enough work has been done for society to take advantage of this.
Do institutions have professionals prepared to address the protection of children and their mothers?
The other day I met a judge from a violence court and I found out that the training is voluntary. It should be mandatory. And the same is true for the rest of the professionals, because a psychologist or educational psychologist is required, but not with specialization. Child psychology is a specialty in itself. If someone does not know the differences in the evolutionary stage, they will not be able to decipher or interpret the story of a creature. Or he's going to interpret it adult-centrically. You will not understand that there are phenomena that occur in the context of violence against women, that in an environment where there is a violent individual, emotional ties become very close because they are protective bonds. If the professional does not know the subject, it is interpreted as the mother being overprotective.
Does the law protect violent men?
It protected man's entire life because it was made by men. The judicial system, which is traditionally male, finds it difficult to understand and demystify the figure of the paterfamilias. Under Roman law, man was omnipotent and the one who decided the life and death of all his offspring. That survives today. Although laws have been made to protect women, those who interpret them still contain patriarchal thinking. It is true that there are people in justice and in all institutions working hard and modifying this way of acting, but they are still the exception.
Question the fear of making the father figure disappear.
In the imagination it costs nothing to forcibly tear a child from the mother's side, but there is a fear of what will happen if they separate it from the father. I clarify that we are not talking about a typical father. If we talk about a violent individual who harms him and is traumatizing his childhood, I believe that far from harming him, he is being done a great favor and is being made safe.
According to the CIS survey, 40% of men believe that feminism harms them.
What we see is exactly the opposite. The patriarchy is very clever and has implanted the idea of false reports when only 20% are reported. With violence against women we are facing an almost invisible crime, but even so it generates myths against women. And vicarious violence is even worse because it is still not reported. And there are very few cases in which vicarious violence is contemplated to open a file in court.
Were there protective measures in the 400 sentences that you analyzed for the book?
For children none.
From your experience, what should be done and not done?
It would be necessary to be consistent with what is proclaimed: base the actions on the best interests of the minor, which does not involve living next to a violent individual, even if he is the father who fathered him. Being a father is not a bureaucratic procedure: it is protecting, caring, putting the well-being of a child before one's own... An individual should not be allowed to forcibly remove a child from the mother's environment. An individual who loves a child puts aside the conflict with the mother and tries to see how to act. But he saves the son above all things.
Should more work specifically be done against vicarious violence?
Unfortunately, you are only reacting when there is a corpse of a creature on a table. Very serious things are happening. The snatching is something very cruel that is happening almost daily in Spain. In the 21st century and in countries that we consider civilized. It is not being taken into account and that is textbook vicarious violence. We are still seeing the tip of the iceberg of vicarious violence, as we once saw in violence against women in which it seemed that only those who were murdered or those with very serious impact marks existed.
