[ad_1]
Many women trapped at home and trapped by abusive partners are unable to leave the house and ask for help, and perpetrators sometimes damage their mobile phones, said Fiona Dwyer, executive director of Solace Women’s Aid, London’s largest provider of support for victims of violence. domestic.
As a result, they are unable to contact the police or call the hotline to request victim support, which means that many women will contact services when quarantine measures are relaxed.
“We are preparing for large flows after quarantine,” Dwyer said in an interview. “It usually happens in the post-Christmas period.”
Similar concerns are felt in other European cities and towns, especially where more people live in smaller apartments than in the United States, and current quarantine regulations are stricter. In France, reports of domestic violence to police increased by a third during the first week of quarantine in the country, with French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner announcing the fight, and even more so in densely populated Paris.
A three-day duel was announced in the Spanish city of Almasora when a man killed a woman in front of her two children.
In the face of such violence, Spanish activists from the Canary Islands and local authorities have established Mascarilla-19, a program that allows victims of violence to report crimes at any local pharmacy, at the request of Mascarilla (Spanish for masks) together with the number “19 ” The pharmacists, informed of the keyword, communicate with the police.
Since then, Mascarilla-19 has spread to Italy, Germany, Norway, the United Kingdom and France, as well as Africa and South America, said Kika Fumero, director of the Canary Islands Institute for Equality. It also predicts that a wave of reports of violence will skyrocket after the end of the quarantine in Spain.
“Fully exported”
Mask-19 has been a success, but unfortunately, because domestic violence is a global problem, it is “exported” entirely, Fumero said in an interview.
According to Ms Dwyer of Solace Women’s Aid, there are calls in the UK for a similar program in supermarkets, but she is not sure if such a campaign would work as a large store would need to train all employees and abusive men can prevent your partners from leaving. shopping at home
In the first week of quarantine in the UK, the number of reports of domestic violence increased by 49 percent compared to the average week in January, according to British charity Crimestoppers.
The numbers are even more shocking.
Mortality rates are even more shocking. During the first three weeks of quarantine in the UK, there have been at least sixteen murders, which are treated as a result of domestic violence, Solace reports, citing data collected during the Counting Dead Women campaign.
This figure is more than double the normal figure and is the highest in the eleven years after the financial crisis. Two of these victims were children in the United Kingdom, and this fact highlights how isolation in confined environments increases other risks, that children are victims of an abusive parent, a relative or an “online predator”, the UN (UN) in mid-April.
Under pressure from child psychologists, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said on April 18 that his government would seek to relax the rules that prevent many children from leaving their homes since mid-March.
But let’s go back to the UK; the government has extended the quarantine and, at least for the moment, opposes calls for an early end to movement restrictions.
Dwyer called on the government to increase funding for support services for victims of domestic violence. “It is an incredibly dangerous time,” he said. – When a person is forcibly trapped in the same environment with a partner with whom a normal relationship is maintained, disputes will eventually arise. When relationships are accompanied by anger and insults, they become forms of domestic violence, which can be emotional or psychological. “
[ad_2]
