A new murder of a woman at the hands of her partner this weekend. The two-year-old girl witnessed the deadly attack with a knife. Another case of violence that no matter how much some try to relativize, it does not stop increasing. There are already 22 so far this year, while 23 children have been orphaned. Since 2003, a total of 1,206. Data that is overwhelming due to the loss of young lives (mostly between 30 and 50 years old), but even more so when looking at the statistics regarding the number of women who have special protection from the police due to the risk who run from being hurt again or even killed.
According to the latest data from VioGén, corresponding to May 31, 12,784 women are considered “cases of special relevance”, that is, the State Security forces, after evaluating them, “detect a special combination of indicators that significantly increase the probability that the aggressor exerts very serious or lethal violence on the victim”, according to the VioGén report. This situation occurs in cases classified as medium, high or extreme risk.
At this risk, there are 281 women who have not even reached 18 years of age. The majority (about 5,600) are between 31 and 45 years old.
The drama is that the number does not stop growing. From January to May, the number of cases of special relevance, those in which the life of the woman is in danger, continues to increase, a thousand more in these five months, which denotes greater aggressiveness on the part of the reported abusers.
Of those nearly 13,000 women, 1,226 are at very high risk; victims who live in real fear of meeting their attacker, fear of losing their lives or harming their children or loved ones.
Currently, in the VioGén system there are 77,666 women who are monitored by the State Security Forces, of whom 38,986 have dependent children. Almost 9,000 children are considered “special relevance cases” due to the environment of abuse in which they live. The risk of something happening to them is very high.
The measure that has proven most effective against abusers once it has been denounced and the corresponding restraining order has been decreed are telematic bracelets. No victim who carried it (the abuser also carries one) has been killed. However, few women wear it.
According to the latest data available (April), 3,600 women live with a telematics bracelet that geolocates their abuser so that, if their attacker breaks the restraining order, they receive a warning and can stay safe until the police arrive. They are 30% more than a year ago.
Only in April, 248 telematic monitoring devices were installed, 29.2% more than a year earlier, according to the latest data from the Monthly Statistical Bulletin of the Government Delegation against Gender Violence corresponding to the aforementioned month of 2023.
The number of telematic bracelets installed to monitor the removal of the aggressor due to gender violence since 2009 is 13,995. Few for the large number of women to be protected, but significantly higher than five years ago, when there were barely a thousand.
Its use has multiplied 3.5 times, after years in which the devices presented dozens of technical problems. The main problem is that the devices work with GPS and, in places without coverage, the operation of the telematics bracelet may fail. In addition to rural areas, it can happen in garages, a place where an assault could be committed. Supposedly the new bracelets have corrected those problems.
In addition, these devices, which require a court order, and were not used to be implanted in victims of gender violence, as denounced by the Association of Women Judges of Spain (AMJE). This January, the president of the Observatory for Domestic and Gender Violence of the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ), Ángeles Carmona, demanded in Congress that telematic control devices continue to be promoted, for better protection of victims of violence of gender, as well as imposing consequences on the aggressors who break restraining orders against women.
