14 july 2016

The numbers of the National Institute of Statistics (INE) of 2015 are revealing: last year 30,990 offences and 1,138 misdemeanours due to criminal offences for gender-based violence were registered in the Spanish courts. Among the over 30,000 crimes, the 53.3% (15,900 cases) were related to injuries. The annual average is 43 victims per day.

43 women report per day injuries due to gender-based violence. In other words, there are 43 men who attack their partners or ex-partners per day and they report it. Taking into consideration that it is calculated that only a 20% of gender-based violence cases are reported, the figure is disastrous.

“The studies indicate that the 80% of abused women for gender-based violence does not report it. If the average of reports per year is 120,000 –that is, over 320 per day–, the actual number of women injured each day is more than a thousand.” These are the words of Miguel Lorente, person in charge of some of these studies during the legislatures in which he occupied the Government Delegation against Gender-Based Violence. He is forensic doctor and he has treated hundreds of victims of this kind of violence.

Miguel Lorente ensures that it is an ongoing violence and that women that suffer from it only report it after many time put up with this type of aggressions. As we have already explained in the blog, gender-based violence is collected in the Criminal Code and includes many sentences that you can consult here:

• Singular abuse, article 153
• Misdemeanour Assault in the Criminal Code: article 148
• Organic Law 5/2010

Something that also shows the numbers of INE are the characteristics of the injuries by male violence. The 15% of cases correspond to the eardrum rupture, a representative injury of this kind of violence. “It is a common injury caused by a slap. And just imagine the strength with which it is dished to blow out that organ”, Miguel Lorente says.

These data are devastating and it is up to the society in general to fight against them: male violence cannot continue reducing to the domestic or personal field of partners or ex-partners. It is a social problem and it depends on everyone that the numbers of 2015 do not repeat and that all male violence is reported.