Femicide is the word that qualifies the forced murders or suicides of women precisely because they are women. RFI offers you testimonies of victims of this violence, in France and in other countries. According to the NousToutes collective, in France, since the beginning of 2023, 79 women have lost their lives due to domestic violence. Last year, 147 women died in this way. Neither women nor children are sufficiently protected alert the actors of this file.
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Victims of domestic violence behind closed doors in their homes, many of them do not dare to leave, let alone lodge a complaint against their executioners.
Saturday July 1 in Nanterre (92), a 38-year-old woman was strangled at her home by a man she knew.⁰
It was his 11-year-old son who called the police. Nearly 68 children were left motherless as a result of femicides in 2023. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/pqVqylL5wL— #WeAll (@WeAllOrg) August 9, 2023
Anissa, 43, almost became part of this grim tally. A little over a year ago, she escaped death by fleeing her home. Following the complaint that the mother filed, her ex-companion is imprisoned. Today Anissa is trying to rebuild herself, and with each new case of femicide, she measures how “lucky” she is to be alive.
Anissa: “I am lucky to be able to be here today and testify”
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Filing a complaint does not protect you from danger
On July 21, Hadjira was killed by her husband. Three months earlier, she had filed a complaint against him. For fear of reprisals, she had also applied for a protective order pending trial. A request rejected by the family affairs judge who had considered “ that no element came to support a real danger for this mother of two children. For lawyer Isabelle Steyer, specializing in domestic violence, it is precisely when women victims of violence file a complaint that they must be protected, since the risk of being killed increases. She is questioned by Candice Mazaud-Tomazic from RFI. ” It is when they take all the steps that they are in even more danger, since they denounce the violence of this man.
That’s when they risk dying and that’s when they’re not protected. We need one hundred percent protection for these women, that is to say that from the moment they file a complaint, we must know that they are in danger. They should be systematically protected from that moment on. The anti-reconciliation bracelet before a conviction decision should be given to all victims, and the judge of freedoms should be able to attribute it to violent men and the judge for family affairs should be able to attribute it to violent men without obtaining their agreement, systematically, even when a complaint is filed for acts of domestic violence. »
Read alsoDespite its law against feminicides, Belgium could break its sad record
Should the parental authority of the aggressor be suspended?
How to rebuild and keep a violent companion away when custody of the children is still shared? This is the other aspect of the fight against feminicides. Victim support associations are fighting to ensure that parental authority rests exclusively with the mother in the event of violence by the father. Today, even in the event of separation, or incarceration, a husband or an ex-companion who is violent towards his wife can retain the exercise of parental authority, obliging the victim to remain in contact with him. According to the associations, it is urgent to suspend the exercise of this authority for the aggressor, this would in some cases avoid the worst…
At the National Federation “Solidarités femmes”, there is no shortage of testimonies from these violent fathers who continue to make rain and shine in the daily lives of their children – even from a distance – by opposing, for example, what they take part in a school outing or have access to psychological support. Its director, Françoise Brié, therefore campaigns for this authority to be entrusted exclusively to the mother, but also so that the spouse cannot obtain – in addition – visitation and accommodation rights. She explains it at the microphoneAmelie Beaucour from RFI: “ How can a perpetrator of violence obtain, by a judicial decision after the separation, the right to receive his children at home, on weekends, half of the school holidays, or even more? And how he is going, through these rights of visitation and accommodation, to continue to harass, and to commit acts of violence, for example at the time of the handing over of the children, but also worse, that is to say suffer the children to reach the ex-companion. »
When the worst could not be avoided, the suspension is not automatic so that some children continue to be under the authority of the man who killed their mother.
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