WUNRN
Latin America Herald Tribune
PERU - WOMEN ARE VICTIMS OF MALE
MACHISMO AT HOME & IN COURT
By Monica Martinez - May 21,2010
LIMA, PERU – Preys of the machismo culture and domestic violence at home,
Peruvian women also have to deal with a justice system that often justifies the
behavior of the aggressor.
Last year – during which there was a 40-percent increase in cases of domestic
violence compared with 2005 – there were 139 women slain and 64 injured, while
in the first three months of this year, 29 women were murdered and attempts were
made to kill another 17, according to figures from the Ministry of Women.
The average is “10 women slain per month. That figure fluctuates but it
probably has a tendency to rise,” the legal counsel for the ministry’s National
Program against Domestic and Sexual Violence, Marta Rivera, told Efe.
The number of domestic-violence cases attended by the program’s 92 emergency
centers has soared from 28,671 in 2005 to 40,882 in 2009.
In the first months of this year, the centers have attended 9,970 cases, counseling
the victims on how to file complaints, seek means of protection and receive
clinical treatment, Rivera said.
“What happens in Peru is that violence is not considered a serious problem and
that in certain cases it is justified,” the head of women’s affairs in the
National Ombudsman’s Office, attorney Teresa Hernandez, said.
Society in general finds violence justified when the woman does not fulfill the
role she “should” perform: not looking after her spouse enough, not asking
permission to go out, or spending too much time outside the home, she said.
“When women behave that way, it is considered inappropriate and deserving of
punishment – that’s why our hypothesis is that since those who enforce the law
(police, prosecutors, judges) have that criterion, complaints are not processed
with the priority or the urgency they require,” Hernandez told Efe.
She is currently working on case studies of women murdered in the five regions
with the highest levels of violence.
Hernandez and her colleague Patricia Sarmiento have encountered a great deal of
reluctance in the justice system to provide sound protection measures, and in
more than half the cases they just urge the attacker not to go on being
violent, without taking more effective action like issuing restraining orders
or confiscating the offender’s weapons.
Figures from the Attorney General’s Office show that 18 percent of women slain
in Peru had asked for protection.
“Very few judges order effective measures of protection,” Sarmiento said,
adding “there is widespread disregard for the national and international
regulations that are essential for resolving these cases,” such as the 1994
Belem Inter-American Convention to prevent, punish and eradicate violence
against women.
Both victims and aggressors tend to be in the 18-35 age group, and two-thirds
of victims are romantically involved with their attackers, according to the
Ministry of Women.
Thirty-eight percent of the killers say they acted out of jealousy.
Some 34 percent of the victims were stabbed to death, 26 percent died of a
beating and 15 percent were shot.
When the aggressors are caught and tried in court, they usually ask for the
benefit of a sincere confession or say that the homicide was the result of
violent emotion, which reduces their sentence to less than 15 years behind
bars, Sarmiento said.
“Finally, an atmosphere of impunity is created that makes the situation worse,
because another aggressor will think nothing will happen to him” if he commits
the same crime, the attorney said. EFE
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