Forced confinement has suddenly altered the course of daily life.
For those who suffer from male violence and child abuse and happen to live with their abuser without escape, the consequences of this disruption can increase the danger to their safety and be an burst psychological suffering.
In this third issue we talk about them.
Gender-based violence
For women who are subjected to male violence, whether physical or psychological, confinement makes it possible for the episodes to become more acute.
In Spain, gender-based violence is a serious problem. This year, 17 women have been murdered by their partners, one of them during the state of alarm (the governmental measures that forced confinement and restrictions on movement outside).
In the first stage of the state of alarm, calls to the hotline 016 increased. In 15 days, from March 14 to 29, they rose by 18% in comparison with the previous month, according to the Ministry of Equality. María Sosa Troya and Ana Torres Menárguez reported for El País that 3,382 women called 016 during those 15 days. Email consultations also increased, by 269.6%, and 168 women used the Whatsapp psychological care service.
If we look in detail at one autonomous community, Catalonia, for example, we find that the authorities recorded a 20% increase in calls to their hotlines. The Equality Office of the Generalitat (the autonomous community government) identified 42 new cases of male violence; 12 women had to leave their homes, Elisenda Colell and Patricia Martín informed in a piece for El Periódico. The reporters added data from official sources: “676 women and 70 children are living with their aggressors”.
In Spain — and in other European countries — a group of pharmacies in the autonomous communities of the Canary Islands, Andalusia, Cantabria, Valencia, Madrid, Catalonia and Extremadura set up a network to help women who cannot use the telephone service for safety reasons, RTVE reported. If a woman suffers gender violence, at home or in the street, she can go to the pharmacy and just say the code “Mask 19”. The attendants will know what to do: they will call 112, the authorities, and file the report.
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, said in an April 6 statement that as infection and confinement progress around the world, violence against women — which Mlambo-Ngcuka calls “the shadow pandemic” — is increasing, which is also reflected in more calls for help through care services countries like Argentina, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States.
“Confinement fuels the tension and stress generated by concerns about safety, health and money. It also reinforces the isolation of women who have violent partners, separating them from the people and resources that can best help them. It is the perfect situation for controlling and violent behavior in the home. At the same time, as health systems are stretched to the limit, domestic violence shelters are also reaching their full capacity, compounding the service deficit by readapting these centers to provide an additional response to COVID,” she said.
To support the United States situation, the director of UN Women used as reference an article by Loi Almeron for Mission Local, who reports that National Domestic Violence Hotline has not seen a concrete increase in calls nationwide, but it has seen a rise in “the number of survivors contacting us, concerned about COVID-19 and how their abusive husband is using COVID-19 to isolate, coerce or increase fear in the relationship,” Katie Ray-Jones, director general of the hotline, said. According to Ray-Jones, in two weeks, between March 10 and 14, 951 women reached out to them.
In Latin America, hotlines for reporting violence against women have been activated or reinforced in Chile, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico, and Peru, according to BBC Mundo.
Child abuse
Child abuse also increases with confinement.
The Anar Foundation, which has a long history in the field in Spain, extended the hours of its childcare service. In the last week of March, they reported 173 cases of “serious violence against minors,” Cathy Elelman wrote for EuroWeekly. 12.7 per cent of those cases were physical violence and 6.9 per cent were psychological violence.
“Children and adolescents who suffer violence are going through this time with a great hopelessness and they can’t escape from it, hence they see suicide as the only way out, and all this can aggravate other psychological problems due to confinement,” Benjamin Ballesteros, program director of the Anar Foundation, told Elelman.
On child abuse in the United States, Jarrod Sadulski, an expert on police response and security warns: “Now, with stay-at-home orders in place, victims may be especially in danger as a result of parental stress from job loss, restricted food sources, financial problems, and the all-day confinement of families remaining together in tight quarters for a long period of time.Whereas before stay-at-home orders victims of child abuse might have been able to get out of the house and away from the threat and to seek help, that option is not available to many victims right now.”
In Latin America and the Caribbean, the NGO Aldeas Infantiles, which covers almost 75,000 children in the region, announced they have reinforced their attention in the region because of what it considers to be a risk of child abuse and mistreatment due to the confinement measures.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) urged the world’s governments “to ensure the safety and well-being” of children during this crisis and “in the face of the intensifying socio-economic impact of the disease [COVID-19].”
“In a matter of months, COVID-19 has completely changed the lives of children and families around the world. Quarantine measures, such as closing schools or restricting movement, while deemed necessary, are disrupting children’s support systems and normal habits. They are also adding new stressors to caregivers who, in many cases, have to give up work,” the UNICEF statement said.
According to this UN office, two out of three children suffer “some form of violent discipline in the home (psychological and physical)” and one out of two receives corporal punishment.
The figures are from before the pandemic.