Gender violence deaths more common in rural areas

THE risk of gender violence-related murders in Spain is higher in rural areas, a new study suggests.

Figures from the CGPJ General Council of Judicial Power reveal that seven out of 10 deaths related to gender-based violence in this country between 2016 and 2018 occurred in localities with less than 100,000 inhabitants.

The CCPJ warns that female victims of this kind of violence “are more unprotected” in these kinds of areas and considers it necessary to “double efforts” to ensure more prevention, assistance and protection resources.

The CGPJ’s latest Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence report found 151 women died at the hands of their partners or former partners from 2016 to 2018, 11.2 per cent less than in the previous three years.

Just under one in three had reported their attackers at some point. Of these nearly half were aged 16 to 45.

The observatory indicated that victims’ silence “is a risk factor for the life of abused women”, and called for increased awareness in society in general, while noting that victims “live gripped by panic which prevents them from reporting due to fear of reprisals.”

The report also found that motherhood was a risk factor: 75 per cent of the women who died over the three years were mothers, and 43 per cent had children aged under 18.

The report says often mothers do not report incidents of gender-based violence in order to protect their children.

In the majority of the cases the killer was their current partner and nearly 65 per cent of the time the victim was living with the aggressor at the time of her death.

In eight out of 10 cases the victim died in her own home.

Further factors which make gender-violence victims more vulnerable, the observatory says, are poverty, financial dependency, disability and pregnancy.

Around one if three of the gender violence-related deaths in Spain between 2016 and 2018 were foreigners.