Examining the Impact of Intimate Partner Violence on Women in Spain's Criminal Courts
Key Highlights :
In Spain, 11% of women over the age of 16 have experienced physical violence by their partner or ex-partner, 8.9% have experienced sexual violence, and 31.9% have reported being subjected to psychological violence. An overwhelming percentage of these women (more than 80% in all three categories) say that the episodes happened more than once. After going through these experiences, some of these women face another process which can be just as painful: reporting the violence, and going through the legal proceedings.
A 2019 macrosurvey of violence against women undertaken by the Government of Spain's Ministry of Equality revealed these alarming figures. To better understand how the self-perception of a group of women living in Spain was determined by the experience of suffering from violence inflicted by their partner, and by their interaction with professionals in the justice system, a team of researchers from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) conducted a study titled The Impact of Intimate Partner Violence on Women in Criminal Courts: Beyond the Victim-Survivor Dichotomy.
The experience of suffering from violence, fear and intimidation by a partner has a major effect on women's self-perception. As a result, many suffer from contradictory feelings, low self-esteem, and a psychological complexity which makes them clearly vulnerable, this being evident when they report the violence and have to cope with the judicial process.
Patricia Hernández-Hidalgo, a member of the UOC's Faculty of Law and Political Science, a researcher in the VICRIM research group, and a co-author of the study, explains that victims of gender violence have emotional baggage when they reach the criminal justice system. Many feel they are judged and questioned by people working in the justice system, they feel they're not believed, they don't understand how the process works or the information they're given, they feel that they have to prove their version of events, and that they have to fit into a profile of a victim who is weak, submissive and passive.
At this point in the process, the system recognizes that the woman is a victim, and the institutions are generally geared towards guaranteeing their social, employment and economic rights in a paternalistic way. Women who go through these processes are often labeled victims or survivors. The concept of a victim is initially linked to adjectives with negative connotations, such as fragile, weak, or dependent, while that of a survivor has more positive connotations, such as empowerment or the ability to take control of their recovery process. However, both concepts act as labels that interfere with the women's recovery process, and are key factors in their experience of the justice system and how they are viewed by society.
The study is based on the experiences of 23 women living in Spain who suffered from violence within their heterosexual relationships and reported what had happened to them. There are significant differences in their accounts as regards how they dealt with the process and their self-perception. The results show the negative psychological impact that interacting with people working in the justice system often had on the victims.
The study's main conclusion is that the dichotomy between a victim and a survivor is insufficient to accommodate the complex casuistry in these situations. What's really important is to understand that the healing process is personal for each victim, and that what's important is to move on and not to become anchored in the role and label of victim.
It is essential to recognize that the justice system plays a crucial role in assigning victimhood to women who report their abusers. As a society, we must offer abused women help without labeling them, without judging them, helping them at their own pace, taking into account their special circumstances and the position that each one of them may have in terms of their situation and their experience.
