WUNRN
BUENOS
AIRES, Jan 19, 2011 (IPS) - "I knew he beat her but I never imagined that
she would end up like this," Elsa Jerez told IPS, talking about her
24-year-old daughter Fátima Catán, a victim of domestic violence in Argentina
who died of severe burns to her body.
Catán's
partner, Martin Santillán, was not arrested. Twice he has sent someone to
threaten to set his mother-in-law's house on fire. The courts are investigating
a double homicide, because Fátima was pregnant, but he has only testified as a
witness.
The young
woman's death five months ago was one of 260 "femicides" -- a term
coined for misogynist or gender-related murders of women -- documented in 2010
by a special observatory of La Casa del Encuentro, an Argentine civil society
association, which has produced an annual report on gender-related murders since
2008.
The 2010
total represents a 12.5 percent increase from 2009 in this South American
country of 40 million people.
Victims of
femicide in
In 65
percent of the cases of femicide, the murderer is the woman's partner or
ex-partner. And many of the killings occur after the courts have ordered the
partner to leave the home or have issued a restraining order to keep him away
from the victim of domestic violence.
Last year
"we saw a veritable epidemic of women who 'accidentally' caught on
fire," Fabiana Tuñez, who heads La Casa del Encuentro, told IPS, pointing
out that the number of cases rose from six in 2009 to 11 in 2010.
Tuñez said
that after a famous musician allegedly doused his wife with alcohol and set her
on fire in February 2010, "a copycat effect occurred."
Domestic
abuse hot-lines have reported that they have lately received more and more
calls from women saying their partners or ex-partners have threatened to burn
them alive, douse them with gasoline, or set them on fire -- threats that are
often accompanied by the tag-line "like Wanda."
According to
Tuñez, the case set a terrible precedent. The former drummer of the Argentine
rock group Callejeros, Eduardo Vázquez, was not arrested after his wife,
29-year-old Wanda Taddei, was admitted to the hospital with burns over 50
percent of her body.
After Taddei
died 11 days later, Vázquez was arrested and an investigation was launched. He
is now in prison awaiting trial.
But the
impunity he initially enjoyed may have encouraged others to follow in his
footsteps, Tuñez said.
Catán's
mother said her daughter had repeatedly been beaten by her partner in the past,
and that several reports were filed with the police. "You nasty old bag,
they called the cops on me," he complained to his mother-in-law at the
time.
After Catán
and Santillán separated briefly, he managed to persuade her to get together
again. "She told me she wanted to give him a chance,"
She saw her
daughter, beaten and badly burnt, in the intensive care unit after Santillán
took the young woman to the hospital. "I think he beat her really badly,
and thought he had killed her, which his why he set her on fire," she
said, in her heartrending attempt to comprehend what happened.
Catán died
five days later, without ever being able to explain what occurred.
In the
meantime, the apartment where she and Santillán lived in Villa Fiorito, a
shanty town on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, had been cleared of all evidence,
Jerez said.
Santillán
said Catán had been using alcohol to clean CDs while smoking a cigarette, and
accidentally set herself on fire. The story was similar to the account given by
Vázquez when his wife Wanda Taddei was admitted to the hospital. According to
the musician, his wife was cleaning a shelf with alcohol.
Tuñez said
that funds are lacking to implement an ambitious law passed in March 2009 to
prevent, punish and eradicate violence against women. She also said a clear
political message from the government and the justice system is needed, to
begin changing attitudes towards sexist violence.
The Supreme
Court's office on domestic violence acknowledged the magnitude of the problem
in 2010, when it reported that 40 percent of murders of women were the result
of domestic abuse.
But in late
2010, the Public Defender's Office presented the study "Discriminación de
Género en las Decisiones Judiciales" (Gender Discrimination in Court
Verdicts), which concluded that discrimination "ensures impunity" for
the perpetrators of gender-based crimes.
Gabriela
Boada, executive director of Amnesty International in
"The
law is not reality yet, and it does not clearly show, with evidence, what
difference it has made in addressing and preventing the violence suffered by at
least one out of three women at some point in their lives" in Argentina,
she said.
Boada
described the law, which takes into account physical, psychological and
economic violence, as "a major stride forward," but said that
"we know that there are huge gaps between the law and its
implementation."
Tuñez said
that what is needed is "a sustained, comprehensive policy for assistance
to victims and an autonomous, specific legal classification of femicide, as
already exists in
"Another
basic problem is that many women are not financially independent, which makes
it even more difficult for them to leave," she said. "That's why we
believe there should be subsidies for housing and food, and that education on
these issues is necessary at all levels."
Tuñez
underscored two positive aspects of the new law: its definition of violence
against women is broad and not just limited to physical abuse, and it
stipulates the creation of an observatory to compile specific official
statistics on the phenomenon, although this has not yet begun to function.
"Awareness-raising
campaigns are also necessary, not only on symbolic dates, but permanently, in
the media, the schools, everywhere -- and funds are needed for that,"
Tuñez said.