Guatemala – High Femicide & Challenges of Prevention & Reportage
Author: Henrietta Thomson
Date: October 29, 2018
Dr.Samy Juarez and Ligia Gomez of the San Carlos Sija health centre stand in front of a sign ‘No to violence against women’. Photograph: Sarah Johnson
By Sarah Johnson in Quetzaltenango – March 7, 2018
Manuela Garcia can still vividly remember the last time she saw her daughter, Maria, alive. Everything seemed normal; Maria was happy and in good health. Little did Garcia know that 24 hours later, she would find her daughter lying dead on the bedroom floor, her body covered by a rug.
“It’s so painful,” says Garcia, choking back tears. “Two years on, and I haven’t forgotten. It’s one thing if your child dies in an accident, but at home? That’s what hurts the most. I’ll never be able to forget.”
Garcia’s daughter was a victim of violence against women. She was strangled, aged 17, by her husband, who was 18 at the time. He lost his temper because she had hidden the house key in an attempt to prevent him from leaving to visit his girlfriend. When Garcia rushed to her daughter’s house after hearing that she had been killed, she found him sitting on the bed holding the baby and texting. Her daughter’s body was on the floor, next to him.
Violence against women is a hidden problem in Guatemala – Lily Wug
Guatemala has the third highest rate of femicide in the world. Between 2014 and 2016, there were 2,264 violent deaths of women in Guatemala, of which 611 were formally reported as femicide. During the same period, 59 perpetrators were imprisoned. Garcia’s son-in-law was one of them.
“Women fear reporting the crime because there’s a culture of machismo and they’re scared of living without financial support, or of their children growing up without a father. Women think of everything but themselves,” says psychologist Ligia Gomez.
“It is a hidden problem,” says Lily Wug, who runs a safe house for victims and survivors of violence against women in Quetzaltenango, a city in the highlands of Guatemala. “As a society we have to do more work in terms of information, raising awareness and training so that women recognise that they shouldn’t have to suffer abuse.”
Wug says the health system in Guatemala has protocols and a legal framework for reporting the crime. But healthcare professionals aren’t fully aware of the signs of violence against women and what they are expected to do if they encounter it.
Guatemala has the third highest rate of femicide in the world.
There’s also a reluctance in some communities to acknowledge violence against women as a problem. Thomas Hart, country director for Health Poverty Action, an NGO that works with health services in the area, says that when he raised the issue at one meeting, the only two men in the room walked out.
All is not lost, however. In San Carlos Sija, a municipality in the department of Quetzaltenango, Gomez is aware of the potential role of health services in tackling the problem. “Violence against women has a huge effect on mental and physical health,” she says. “If we don’t get to women in time, we know there could be catastrophic consequences.”
She tells the story of one woman who was found dead at home after ingesting poison. She had also killed her five-year-old daughter and was eight months pregnant. The police found a note saying that she didn’t want to cause problems for the father of her daughter. She was being emotionally abused and had killed herself to avoid further harm. Gomez recognises that she was probably living with severe depression, but this wasn’t picked up when she visited the health centre on two occasions to get prenatal care. “We have to take steps so this doesn’t happen again,” says Gomez.
As a result of this missed opportunity, every pregnant woman who attends health services in the town is given a questionnaire to fill out. There are six questions related to mental wellbeing and abuse. If a patient answers yes to two or more of the questions, they are referred to the psychologist. Gomez then evaluates them. If she deems them to be victims of violence against women, she can encourage them to report it and give them mental health support.
It’s difficult to get women to come forward. We know violence against women exists – stories abound – Ligia Gomez
This method is by no means comprehensive, as the clinicians recognise, and they acknowledge the need for more staff; Gomez says she is one of three psychologists in Quetzaltenango department and there are no psychiatrists. In her two years in the job, she hasn’t yet been referred a victim of domestic abuse via this method. But, it’s a start. It is the only health service in the department to issue such a questionnaire and to make a concerted effort to tackle the problem.
Gomez travels around the region promoting her services to other healthcare professionals, schools, libraries and the community at large. She works in a challenging environment: “It’s difficult to get women to come forward. We know violence against women exists. Stories abound but people don’t see how health services can help. There are some who I convince to come and see me in a professional capacity, but when I explain the process of reporting the crime, many don’t want to go ahead with it. Those that do often only get halfway through the process; I have to refer them to the police and then they have to go through the local justice system. They have to appear before a judge who will often ask them to consider entering into a reconciliation process with their partner.”
As Wug says: “We haven’t overcome the problem [of violence against women] because many fear going through the legal system. There is discrimination in the health system – it’s made harder when they don’t speak the language of indigenous women – but it’s worse in the justice system. Change is slow.”
https://mailchi.mp/anrows/forgotten-victims?e=26b04b7a83__________________________________________________
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