Mexican mothers protest with Christmas spheres against vicarious violence

Mexico City, Dec 23 (EFE).- Mexican mothers from the association National Women’s Front demonstrated on Thursday with Christmas spheres in front of family courts in Mexico City, calling for the creation of a law against vicarious violence.

Women activists turned out with symbols of the Christmas festivities in front of the courthouse and placed spheres with the names of children they have not been able to meet because they have been prevented from doing so by their fathers.

“This is a call for help to the authorities who are not doing their job. Vicarious violence is one of the most serious types of gender-based violence,” the association’s co-founder Jennifer Seifert told EFE.

Vicarious violence is a form of gender violence that is exercised against third parties, mostly children, to hurt a woman.

Seifert has not seen her children Sofi, 12, and Matteo, 8, for eight months, which led her to establish the Women’s National Front organization, which now brings together thousands of mothers across the country.

The activists explained that there is a pattern among the aggressors, who are often the fathers – sometimes with violent backgrounds -, who stay with the children claiming before the judges that they have been victims of their mother.

In the worst case, the father ends up taking the life of the children in order to cause greater pain to the woman.

Since 2019, the justice commission of the Chamber of Deputies has been analyzing a series of reforms to the Federal Penal Code to impose up to 10 years’ imprisonment on a spouse who will remove, retain or conceal a minor outside the Mexican state in which he or she resides. EFE

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