Vicarious violence: the mourning of mothers for their living daughters and sons

Over the past few months I have had the opportunity to raise awareness of an issue that should not exist, in a violence considered one of the cruelest for women and mothers; through which they live a mourning for their living daughters and sons. They spend every minute of every day thinking and wondering if they will see their sons and daughters again; they lose physical and emotional stability and live pain that has been silenced and normalized by society itself for decades.

This is vicarious violence, that which seeks to violate, control, subdue and hurt the mother through the most precious thing; her daughters and sons. After having suffered and survived certain violence by the father of their sons and daughters, women decide to break this cycle in order to protect themselves and their children, not knowing that the worst of all violence is really beginning.

Once the couple's relationship is broken, the man insists on continuing to cause harm. As she no longer has the mother of her daughters and sons within her reach to continue this aggression directly, she loses that “power” that she exercised over her and reaches a new level of violence, using her own sons and daughters, holding them hostages psychologically and physically to ensure that the mother suffers a pain from which it will be very difficult. to recover.

Vicaria, which comes from Latin vicarius, means: what does he have the times, power and faculties of another person or replaces him. In this violence, the main victim is the mother, the man uses sons and daughters by substitution to cause what many mothers refer to as a “living death”.

We are experiencing a major social crisis and problem that has completely gotten out of the hands of the authorities. The problem is already detected, analyzed and supported and is growing. It is out of control, it is a situation that begins and is planned by the aggressors, it feeds on lawyers who profit from the pain of children and adolescents, it grows with the help of institutions and evolves into a problem that causes irreversible and irreparable harm to mothers and their daughters and sons in many cases.

Children and adolescents are psychologically violated and manipulated to create a false reality about their mothers, a reality where their mothers are the bad, the aggressors and the violent ones. They are deceived into thinking that they were abandoned or that they are not important to them. They are taken to such extreme psychological damage that to survive this trauma they have to lift the few mental defenses they have acquired at their young age and “empathize” with the aggressor (their father) in order to survive. By following all orders, telling all the lies that are needed and they are forced to always speak against the most important person in their lives.

After this manipulation comes the abduction, retention and concealment of minors. Parents take children away by taking advantage of the days of coexistence or through an act of violence with armed and dangerous people, as if it were a kidnapping. Moms are totally prevented from seeing them, they are immediately involved in endless criminal and family proceedings to try to recover the most important thing that was wrongfully stolen from them.

The institutional violence experienced by victims of vicarious violence is unheard of, under the same patriarchal society in which we find ourselves, we see how many of them are invisible when they want to file a complaint, re-victimized the moment they decide to raise their voices and tell their story. They are taken to live a judicialized life where they find themselves every day fighting against false complaints, illegal trials, manipulated psychological tests, among other things. They spend more than 12 hours a week attending legal proceedings, if they were women dedicated to the home they find themselves in need of getting work in order to be able to afford a correct defense, but at the same time it is difficult for them to find a job opportunity that allows them to leave for 12 hours a week to fulfill the requirements of courts and public ministries.

According to the national survey for the “Recognition of Vicarious Violence in Mexico” conducted by the National Front against Vicarious Violence, 88% of women who suffer vicarious violence received threats prior to the abduction of their children that they would be removed from childhood forever. Eighty per cent of perpetrators have denied alimony in favor of their children and 100% report having suffered some previous violence by the aggressor.

One of the closest cases I have ever had of vicarious violence is that of Jennifer Seifert Braun, who has been without her daughter and son for more than 1 year. After several years of divorce, she decides to file a criminal complaint against her father for breach of alimony, without knowing that this act or action of ensuring the good of her daughter and son and their right to receive maintenance would suffer reprisal such as the abduction of the most important persons in his life.

After more than 2 years of trial and after a notice of a hearing for the judgment against him where he would be sentenced to pay more than 1 million pesos in arrears, as a vengeance he decides to take his own children to file a complaint for alleged violence, violence that he claims existed throughout his children's lives, for 12 years of the girl and 7 years of the boy, but curiously, it was after the complaint, after the threats to withdraw from the complaint, after asking that there be no evidence that he had put a false bail in the divorce agreement that he decides that it is the right time to expose this non-existent violence.

Throughout Jennifer's process and during her struggle to recover her children, investigations led her to discover that the father of her children is not only an aggressor of women, girls and boys, but also committed fraud and threatens people's lives and health, since he poses as a vascular and aesthetic surgeon with a professional ID of a lawyer (now a judge) from Guadalajara.

Jennifer has taken the entire process against her in accordance with the law, following all the steps to get her children back to her as they should be. After their children were abducted, changed schools, hidden in hotels, changed homes more than 5 times; they were taken to the appropriate institutions and responsible for ensuring the best interests of the children and were reviewed physically and psychologically and the results of this multidisciplinary study show that children have been manipulated into lying and that the environment in which they meet their dad is not right or safe for them. It has been 3 months since that psychological report was released by 7 experts from the Office of the Procurator for the Protection of Children and Adolescents of the State of Mexico and despite the fact that this same institution recommended the change of care for children immediately, the authorities insist that they continue to live with their aggressor.

The father of Jennifer's children is being reported for abduction, breach of alimony, disappearance, usurpation of professions and fraud. Once again we can see the inequality between men and women in this country. Although Jennifer lifted the complaint of non-compliance with alimony in 2019, it is only now in 2022 that the authorities are following up correctly. 10 months after her children were abducted, Amber and Odyssey alerts were given to Jennifer only because the father failed to comply with a rooting imposed by the family court and although he presented his new address, it is a fact that neither the children nor the father are living there.

Jennifer's daughter and son are missing, the father is hiding so as not to receive a single notification regarding the legal proceedings he must face. It is supported by a small network of accomplices who are also responsible for child abuse and the harm that is being done to them.

Jennifer's love for her children led her to transform pain into strength so that she could create together with other women and moms who live the same, The National Front Against Vicarious Violence, to raise awareness and drive meaningful change in our country.

Going back specifically to continue talking about this violence as such, although it has been established on several occasions throughout this text that the main victim of vicarious violence is the mother, the most serious damage is suffered by children and adolescents. Those few who have managed to reunite with their mothers after months and years of separation, return with anxiety, post-traumatic stress, depression, suicidal ideations, traits of sexual and physical abuse. They become children and adolescents withdrawn and isolated from society; they have serious regressions in their physical and emotional development, they develop feelings of abandonment, low self-esteem, nervous disorders, and later in their adult lives they are likely to copy the same patterns of aggression to which they were subjected and subjected.

For me, with just one of these consequences and damage to which these childhoods are exposed is enough to want to raise my hand, say enough and stop this terrible violence.

Men are hiding behind a false “best interest of the girl, boy and adolescent” to take revenge and commit acts that lead many mothers to want to even take their lives. This violence has its most extreme version of infanticide and femicide when the father feels that he has not managed to continue assaulting as planned.

The question is NOT do we have to wait until we get to this extreme to react and do something? The question is why are we unprotecting from the beginning the childhoods that are the most precious thing for this society, putting the so-called “rights” of the father above? Why are we unprotecting the little ones and leaving aside their rights? Why are we taking away from childhoods the possibility of being free of mind, body and soul? And why are we taking away the opportunity of mothers to maternate and live a life free of violence?

Vicarious violence is a social problem, it grows with the complicities of the people around the victims, it is reinforced by the sexist society in which we live and is being protected by the authorities.

Mexican moms have come a long way to be able to show this violence, they have completely set aside their lives to create collectives, to join forces and efforts to reach an early solution so that they can reunite with their daughters and sons. They use every spare second of the day to think of a new way to save their daughters and sons from their aggressor. It is time that we as a society, as authorities, as opinion leaders, as media, as businessmen, etc., recognize this and help them change the terrible direction that the lives of Mexican children and adolescents who are victims of vicarious violence are taking.

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