Everyone knows what the ONCE acronym means. About to turn 85, the National Organization of the Spanish Blind not only helps blind people, but anyone with a disability who wants to improve their personal autonomy. He is also the speaker for women like Veras Dabbo, who explains: “He made me sleep on the floor and only took me to bed when he wanted sex.”
Or Esther’s speaker: “They raped me when I was 16 years old. “That’s where it all started.” Or Elena’s: “The last time she beat me up we were at her aunt’s house.” They and others like them (Lorey, Lola, Carmen, Cristina…) are the most vulnerable and invisible of a group that is already very vulnerable and invisible: the victims of sexist violence who, in addition, have some disability. That, however, has not stopped them from being brave.
“I got tired and told my monster that I was stronger than him. I separated and started living,” says Eva. With a 65% physical and mental disability, Ana María, a victim first of her father and then of several toxic relationships, has her voice break when she remembers her past, but she quickly recovers. “I’m not going to get excited anymore because now I’m happy. I want to help other women, whether they have disabilities or not. That’s why I’m here”.
And where is? Before a mostly female audience, in an auditorium in Barcelona (there have been similar events in other cities), standing up for the Women in ON VG mode project, by Inserta Empleo, an entity of the ONCE Foundation. Loli García is the director of this employment springboard in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, which helps disabled and abused women to “regain the reins of their lives with training and work.”
“The most important social policy is labor inclusion,” maintain Ana Miguel Martínez and Èlia Soriano, from the Servei Public d’Ocupació de Catalunya and the Institut Català de les Dones, respectively. “What do employees with disabilities contribute?” they ask Joel Rodas, spokesperson for Ilunion, ONCE’s group of social companies. And Joel responds: “Naturality, normality, commitment, great profitability…”.
“And team cohesion and improvement of the work environment,” adds Àngels Forés, director of Mango, one of the firms that has partnered with Inserta Empleo. “And love,” adds Nancy Rodríguez, another complicit businesswoman, herself with a disability and with employees with disabilities: “Maybe they don’t have the strength to lift a sick person out of bed or to shower him, but they do have the strength to give him love and joy in abundance. ”.
Strength, resilience and courage are three of the characteristics of the protagonists of a choral book by Inserta Empleo, The Voice of Courage, by the journalist, writer and poet Esther Peñas. The work, which can be downloaded here, collects the testimonies of fourteen phoenix women, reborn. One of them is Isabel, with a 54% disability, who was married for 20 years to an abuser who almost left her blind in one eye after a beating.
Isabel went in and out of the hospitals, she called the Police and the Civil Guard several times, who came to her house, looked and left. She is miraculously alive. One day, when she finally managed to separate herself and began to receive help, a man stared at her on a terrace. He was one of those police officers who did nothing. He identified himself and asked for forgiveness because he had a bad conscience. “May God forgive you. “I can’t,” he replied.
Lorey, with neurological problems, spent seven years with an abuser in uniform and with a service pistol. He left her with nothing: no money (he was a cocaine addict) and no health. Today she works in the reception and administration of a nursing home, does theater in an all-female company and wants to send a message to other women: “The tunnel can be long and dark, but it always has an end with light. Don’t stop, move forward.”
Esther Peñas, who in addition to being the author of the book is responsible for the digital area of ??Inserta Empleo, emphasizes that sexist violence is multifaceted, is not limited to physical abuse and “has equally tragic manifestations, such as psychological, verbal, economic or institutional”. The consequences of this violence are also very diverse. Lola, for example, 59 years old, admits that she “wet the bed until she was 29.”
Their desires and their memories reveal how much they have suffered. “I want to grow up next to someone who treats me like a person” (Esther). “I was not in love, but absorbed” (Antonia, very lucid, despite her intellectual disability). Virginia, 27 diopters, was beaten so badly by her second partner that she disfigured his face, but she was happy because that afternoon her children had gone out for a walk and did not witness her savage behavior.
The abuse took the form of workplace harassment in the case of Adela, the exception: her husband is wonderful. Nigerian Veras Dabbo, who does not want to marry again “not even with a millionaire,” experienced many abuses, including sexual exploitation and human trafficking. For this reason, she, like María Esther, Eva María, Elena, Carmen and the others, asks: “Seek help, speak, denounce.” This lady from Lagos is angry with herself for not doing it sooner.
Why do they do what they do? Once again Ana María summarizes the general will: to help. Because not everyone will be as lucky as María Esther, who in the middle of filing a complaint against her abuser recanted and wanted to leave, but the civil guard who was caring for her convinced her not to do it, to move on. Thanks to that, María Esther knows that you can also get out of hell. “And if we could get out, so could you.”
Their experiences show that finding the exit door from gender violence can be heroic. Heroic, but not impossible. Ana María’s life, like those of her companions, would deserve an entire book. All the pages of this diary would not be enough to summarize it. Only child and mother of four children (actually five, because she also loves the daughter of her last partner), this woman has a debt with the past: Isabel.
Ana María’s mother was the victim of an authoritarian, arrogant and abusive husband. She was a girl and didn’t want to see what was happening at home. Her mother, Isabel, explained it to her, but she believed that she was exaggerating and did not pay much attention. When she passed away she realized her blindness because she then inherited her mistreatment. As incredible as it may seem, daughters of abusers end up as adults in the clutches of other men like that.
“It happened to me. I made a mistake. And not once, but three times.” Not all of her partners were bad: the third acted driven by the demon of drinking and gambling. One step has given him back the will to live. It could have been a step forward or backward. She was on the subway and she wanted to end it all. Fortunately, she thought of her children and took a step back. Going back allowed him to move forward. Thus she arrived at ONCE and she was able to rise from her ashes.
