As Gender Violence Increases, Victims Are Blamed in Ecuador.

AutorSaavedra, Luis Angel

The justice system and police investigators in Ecuador are allowing acts of violence against women to go unpunished, and are using stereotypes to justify the violence.

This situation is even more alarming when it involves trans women or women who have had abortions, two groups that are not covered by a new law that seeks to protect women from violence. These women are left with little recourse in the face of a growing wave of sexist and homophobic violence (NotiSur, April 12, 2013) in the country.

Gender violence on rise

According to the 2010 census, women make up 50.4% of Ecuador's population. The fact that women are in the majority is not reflected in public institutions. In the criminal justice system, female victims are stigmatized during investigations and throughout the judicial processes. Additionally, most judicial processes result in little punishment for the perpetrators or reparations for the victims, because of social pressure to silence reports of gender violence, and because the judicial system manages the evidence poorly, which frequently leads the victims to drop their cases.

Data shows that violence against women is one of the country's most serious structural problems. It has economic, social, political, and cultural repercussions that result in power relationships that subordinate, exclude, and discriminate against women. According to a national survey on gender violence (Encuesta Nacional de Violencia de Genero) and to a plan for gender equality in Ecuador known as Agenda Nacional de las Mujeres y la Igualdad de Genero, between 2014 and 2017 six out of every 10 women suffered some type of violence, with indigenous women and women of African descent being the most affected. In the first four months of 2017, there were 502 sexual violence complaints, of which only 69 have been resolved with criminal sanctions. Sexual abuse in educational institutions also peaked in 2017.

Stereotypes in justice

It's also striking that women were the victims in 67% of the more than 4,000 cases of reported involuntary disappearances.

When a woman is reported missing, especially if the woman is young, the investigation is usually slow, and authorities tend to blame the missing woman. For example, state agents usually focus their investigation on a victim's lifestyle or her relationships. In the case of Juliana Campoverde, a young woman who disappeared in 2013, the victim's mother had to put up with statements from investigators who implied the...

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