At the end of the summer of 2005, we heard the worst reports on domestic violence of the year: 3 women murdered last weekend, one victim per day. 18 victims during the summer, from the 1st of June when M. Mami was found strangled in her house, when another seventeen women were still alive but not safe from their partners’ madness.
They say summer is an especially conflictive season. Coexistence, conflictive in and of itself, is more difficult because couples spend more time together. 3 victims in the last three days, 18 in the last three months, 41 women murdered in 2005 before the end of August.
Why love becomes terror? The man who loves you: the same one who kills you. When love and pain appear in the same hands, and good and evil appear in the same person, the most abject and toxic roots of a human being emerge. In intimacy, one feels vulnerable and is not prepared for any threat, and terror accomplishes its goals.
The madness of hate can be cured, psychologists and experts tell us so. And from the ruins of the spirit, humanists look tirelessly for an explanation that may finally lead to drugs.
░ The accused was drunk, his Lordship
"He snorted cocaine and woke up drunk". Often he woke me and the children up and beat us … At the worst moments, I received two beatings a day,” denounces Fatima, a victim of abuse.
Testimonies that refer to alcohol, and other substances that the abuser probably consumes, are frequent in cases of domestic violence. When people are asked in surveys for the reasons that may favor the aggressions, 90% answer alcohol and drugs.
Other data shows that the habitual users of alcohol, cocaine, heroin and finally all drugs except benzodiazepines, are mostly men (80%, more or less, as opposed to 20% of women).
But, which is the real incidence of drugs in domestic violence? Drug use makes the abuser feel disinherited and reinforces violent behavior, but professionals warn: “Often drugs are not the cause of the violence, but the excuse.” (Jose Ramon Landaroita Jauregi, expert in couple’s therapy who deals with abusive situations). “When a killer is found, the experts immediately catalogue him as an addict or a psychopath. In the case of the ‘suspected’ killer of Elche, who killed his wife and two children with a hammer on – the 14th of April 2005 -, both diagnoses have converged. Nevertheless, I have an alternative explanation…
I am convinced that he had used violence against his wife previously. The night of the murder he had gone boozing with a mate. He relapsed into cocaine and longed for the time when he was an hardware salesman, got drugs and had fun and no responsibilities. His wife and children were a burden…
Cocaine stimulated a premeditated killer conduct.” (Andres Montero Gomez, President of the Spanish Society of Psychology of Violence).
░ Drugs before a rape
A medical statement is common in rape emergencies: the victim ingested drugs. But, what type of drugs?
What do GHB or gamma hydroxybutyrate acid and Rohypnol or flunitrazepam have in common? Both drugs are colorless, odorless and tasteless. The increase in the use of these drugs in the last few years, at parties and on dates, shares a peculiarity: involuntary use. Because of its characteristics, this type of imperceptible drug is dropped unnoticed into the drink of the unaware victim, causing unconsciousness. For that reason, GHB and Rohypnol are known as ‘date rape’ drugs.
In an atmosphere of trust and proximity, at a party or a close dinner, the victim is not conscious of the dangers. Then, the mate becomes a threat, the potential abuser or rapist with who she could be having a drink or chatting a few minutes before the aggression.
In these cases drugs are not only a stimulus, but also an instrument for a calculated crime on a completely defenseless person, unconscious after consuming depressants of the nervous system.
After several hours, the victim recovers consciousness feeling badly and confused. She tries to remember, but only has some flashbacks of the beginning of the night: only moments of euphoria and amusement, but also an increasing sensation of uncertainness and intense melancholy. Finally, she decides to get in touch with a doctor or the police.
░ The feminicide of Juarez City
There is a place near the border of El Paso, in Texas, far from the big cities, where violence against women reaches its ultimate horror.
Like a nightmare come to life, Juarez City, in the north of Mexico, has become a cemetery for women. A black hole of torture and death for more than 300 women for the last 15 years. The systematic crimes follow the same process of kidnapping, torture, sexual abuse, mutilation and strangulation. Crimes that still go unpunished today, in a place that seems so far and unreal because we do not feel strong enough to understand it.
On September 26th, 2003, a delegation of experts from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime visited Juarez City. The report was emitted one month later and after prior reports from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (2002), Amnesty International (October 2003) and the National Human Rights Commission (October 2003). Specifically, the reports point out:
- Besides the misogyny and domestic violence, they emphasize the relation of homicide to drug dealing and, the complicity of the police and other authorities, all of which favor impunity.
░ The sceneries of the domestic violence
Beyond the victim’s personal hell, close to where we work or live; far away, in another world, terrified women live in ghettos of misery and condemnation, deep holes of poverty and drugs where the disenfranchised survive thanks a courage as unreal to us as their whole existence.
They say that in the markets of prostitution in Central America, pimps force prostitutes to use crack and heroin until they are hooked on it, then the pimps become a drug that deal and make the prostitutes dependant on them.
Drugs, which have the virtue of entering the narrowest gap, are present at the scenes of domestic violence just like the unexpected clues that film detectives handle like pieces of a puzzle.
When the case is solved, the psychologist, another detective, will have a snapshot of a loaded puzzle; the image of a story of sexism and possession which ends up on the front page of a newspaper, whose backdrop can be the inside of a luxurious mansion or an Asian ghetto: “All of them are our daughters. All of them are our loss,” say the mothers of Juarez City.
OTHERS
░ Sport and Drugs
░ Music and Drugs
░ Cinema and Drugs
░ Sexuality and Drugs
░ Domestic violence and drugs
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