“In Belgium, we do not protect these women”
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Luca was stabbed to death in the Jupille district of Liège by his mother’s former companion. The alleged attacker was already known to justice for acts of violence. Lucas was 22 years old. Passionate about breakdancing, he was followed by 1.6 million people on TikTok. This drama highlights how children are also the victims of violence suffered by their parent, most often their mother, while a feminicide takes place every seven days in Belgium. “On a reminder of the road ahead on the French-speaking side. The family dimension of the problem of violence is taken into account more in Flanders, which has another definition of the problem by talking about violence within the family and between intimate partners“, explains ULiège sociologist Aline Thiry. The terms “domestic violence” are often inappropriate, in particular because they occur in multiple scenarios and not necessarily between married spouses. There are no official statistics of the phenomenon but rather a black figure which estimates that at least one woman in three will be confronted during her life with intimate violence. “This is an extremely frequent phenomenon. It is a public health and social problem. In almost all cases of femicide, the woman filed a complaint first. In Belgium, these women are not protected. It does not work, denounces Adélaïde Blavier, professor of psychology at ULiège. In Spain, violent men wear a bracelet that signals if they approach their victim, for example.”
This violence is not only physical. It can be economical, the victim being deprived of all autonomy. It is most often psychological. Most perpetrators operate on the economy and do not exercise blows but intimidation which makes it much easier to blame without trace. The victim is always energized in a climate of insecurity. A phenomenon of control is exercised where the partner demands that all the attention be on him, not supporting that the other takes care of his own needs. “We see situations where the whole organization revolves around the father of the family, with children and a wife who only takes care of the desires and the comfort of the man. It’s a pattern that’s actually not far off from what many have experienced in the past when a good wife was conditioned to meet her husband’s needs.“, develops Jean-Louis Simoens, responsible for the line” Listening to domestic violence “. “It is of great complexity. Impulsive people do not manage their anger. Others are manipulative. And we know that a violent man with a woman has a tendency to start again with other women. Behind all this, there is the place of the woman who is evolving but with an equality that is not yet there and a great impotence of society.“, concludes Adélaïde Blavier.
Pernicious
What is extremely complex for the victims to unravel is that the more they move away from their violent partner, the more they put themselves in danger, the author not supporting that she escapes them. 80% of feminicides thus take place after a separation. This violence is also difficult to manage because it comes from where we really do not expect it, from the loved one, in whom we seek security and trust. “This causes cognitive dissonance in victims“, defines Jean-Louis Simoens. And shame. “Rather than saying that the spouse she has chosen behaves badly, the victim will hide the problem, move away from her family and her friends, which suits the author. The victims do not want to leave their partner, some return to him. This ambivalence is not always understood“explains Adélaïde Blavier.
Gear
The first blow, the first slap, the first shove, is that the gear? “It can happen to anyone to be violent, believes Jean-Louis Simoens. What is decisive is the attitude that the author adopts afterwards..” If the latter feels responsible, he will seek to repair while the repeat perpetrator seeks external causes to justify his behavior. It particularly blames the victim. “What leads to violence is often linked to one’s own history, the way one attaches oneself, how one guarantees one’s safety by taking control over the other. There is no profile of the victims but they often have weakening factors in their journey.”
Visibility
The health crisis is a particular focus on the issue. Lockdown has locked people into the infernal spiral of violence at the heart of their homes. “There is an increase in calls since the Covid and the nature of the calls shows that the victims are even more isolated“says Jean-Louis Simoens. There hasn’t been an increase in facts. But the pre-existing situations have been exacerbated and the victims made vulnerable. “The health crisis has had the virtue of making visible the violence that has become everyone’s concern when the ground had been prepared by feminist movements. A quarter of calls today come from relatives who are concerned about their sister, their friend, their neighbor… This was not the case before.”