Since the Argentine psychologist Sonia Vaccaro coined the term vicarious violence more than a decade ago, more than 50 children have been killed in Spain. Killing a child is the most extreme way to hurt a mother. Also make it disappear, explains Vaccaro, which he has analyzed in his latest book, Violencia vicaria. Hit where it hurts, more than 400 cases.
Are the cases increasing because tools are not used?
My hypothesis is that the dangerousness of an individual has been dissociated and it has been considered that it can be dangerous for the mother, but not for the children, who have been exposed. In Spain, the organic law 8/2021 says that they must protect the creatures.
is it done
Not yet, despite the fact that visits and joint or full custody are said to be suspended. We have seen cases of individuals convicted of gender violence who had custody of their children. It’s nonsense.
The lawyer for Leo’s mother, murdered by his father, explains that the law allows for evidence to be taken, but that it is not done.
The law says “unless the judge considers…”. Leaving this aside, the patriarchal collective imagination still survives: thinking that an abuser can be a good father. Laws and the mentality of society and those who apply the law must be changed. We still lack a great social reflection to understand that if we see that an individual is dangerous for the mother, he is dangerous. Point.
Is there vicarious violence in civilized separations?
Yes. The mothers want to report, but they say they are not heard in the courts.
Can you give examples?
Interrupting treatments for chronic diseases, sending the child back to the mother’s house without the seat belt for her to see and suffer. Children are taken as objects.
Are attitudes of this kind more normalized?
Yes. And what we see is that behaviors that prevent contact with the mother when they are with him are minimized. For example, that he doesn’t let you know where they’re going on vacation, that the mother can’t have access to the children, that he sends reckless messages about child murders while the children are in his care… We see it almost daily.
Are children protected in separation processes?
Breakups, even when there is violence, are resolved as a conflict between adults. And the creatures are parted as if they were another gain. Children don’t count and they are the ones who suffer. Everyone speaks for their best interest, but they have no voice. They are not listened to, even though the law says they must be listened to. The discourse that if the father is rejected is because of the mother: the famous and false parental alignment syndrome, which is a form of vicarious violence, has become very widespread. If the creature says the opposite of what it wants to hear, they are said to be manipulated. And begins a path in which they are even uprooted by the force of their environment without caring about anything at all. This is very traumatic for the creatures. They are forced to live with someone they have expressed fear of.
In the book he talks about Federico, who didn’t want to go with his father…
He ended up killed at a meeting point.
Is adult-centered justice a problem?
Absolutely. It belongs to the patriarchal system, to weigh the pater familias as an omnipotent center no matter what he looks like, who he is… When a child rejects the father because he has seen him shout or even hit him or his mother, the father is never asked. The mother is blamed, saying that she manipulates and punishes the child. It is exactly the sequence in the patriarchal system we live in, which is more than 5,000 years old.
The courts do not act without a complaint, lawyers say.
It is logical for an abused woman to be afraid of the aggressor, but the environment could denounce him and not enough has been done for society to take sides.
Do the institutions have trained professionals?
I met a judge from a violence court and found out that the training is voluntary. It should be mandatory. And the same for the rest of the professionals. Child psychology is a specialty in itself. If someone does not know the differences in the evolutionary stage, they cannot interpret the story of a creature. Or does it adult-centrically. He 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, the emotional bonds become very tight because they are protective. If the professional does not know the subject, it is interpreted that the mother is overprotective.
He questions the fear of making the father figure disappear.
In the imagination, it doesn’t cost anything to tear a child by force from the mother’s side, but there is the fear of what happens if they separate it from the father. Let me clarify that we are not talking about a conventional father. If we talk about a violent individual who hurts him, I think that, far from harming the child, he is putting him out of danger.
In your experience, what should be done and not done?
It should be consistent with what is proclaimed: base actions on the best interests of the minor, who cannot live with a violent individual, even if it 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… It should not be allowed that an individual can tear a child from the environment of the mother by force .
Should we be working against vicarious violence?
Unfortunately, it’s only reacting when there’s a creature’s corpse on a table. Very serious things are happening. The bootlegs are a very cruel thing that is happening almost daily in Spain. They are not being taken into account and this is textbook vicarious violence. We are still seeing the tip of the iceberg of vicarious violence as we then saw in violence against women, in which it seemed that there was only murder or very serious beatings.
