Murder of a woman, attempted murder of another, kidnapping of an ex-girlfriend, rape … These are all cases, one more terrible than the other, that have taken place in the past ten days in Croatia. Darko Kovačević Daruvarac, convicted of brutally beating an 18-year-old girl, was also released a few days ago. The statistics are devastating. In the first two months of 2022, three women were killed. Last year the same situation. Many women live in a hell of violence. Some saved their lives. We talked to them.
Their identity has changed, locations and details about them are not important. Their testimonies are important. These are their stories …
– He called me a goat, a fool, a madwoman, a whore, he said I was poor … He beat me and the children whenever he got drunk. I went through hell that I would not wish on my worst enemy – said a woman who saved herself from the hell of violence after three years. She wants to be anonymous. She is in her thirties, with a tired and somewhat blank look as she talks about the horrors she has suffered. Without tears and emotions, she recounted her life’s tragedy, which, apart from beatings, threats to kill her and her children and sexual harassment, was permeated with constant fear for the lives of both her and their children.
– He would come home drunk almost every night. He staggered, snorted, and was aggressive. He was bothered by children’s laughter, playfulness, and even crying. I was not hurt by the blows and anger that was pouring out on me. It hurt that he beat them too. If I attacked them, I would stand in between, to get more, just not to touch them. I realized that if I put children to sleep earlier, they will not touch them, they will only beat me – the woman says. She was afraid. She confessed to her mother, but she told her to suffer because the children need a father.
– He often put a knife to my throat. I had to have sex with him when he wanted to, ”he recalls. One day the glass overflowed. She asked for help, first from a friend and then at the Safe House. She works today and is happy.
He tells a similar story another woman. Her ex-husband beat her, tore her, pushed her, hit her on the head and body with her hands and feet … For more than ten years she gathered strength, at the same time suffering the most severe humiliations, fists and ugly words. She ran away. From one hell to another, he says.
– If I knew what was waiting for me, I would think about everything again. At first I thought the worst was over. A month after leaving, he beat up our daughter and reported that I did it. The daughter told a social worker that her father had beaten her, but they did not believe her – the woman begins a shocking testimony. The ex-husband applied for an interim measure and asked his daughter to live with him.
– The court approved it based on the opinion of one institution. Execution follows. The child was snatched from my hand as he screamed, pushed into his van and dragged as she desperately called out to me. That is why she needed psychological help – she adds.
But the story doesn’t stop there. Her ex-husband sued her for mental pain and received a verdict.
“I had to pay him a few dozen of my monthly income,” he says. In another institution, she performed a new expert opinion, which says that she has proper parental competencies, but the court does not accept that opinion.
– I don’t have money and I haven’t paid everything yet, so I face imprisonment – concludes a woman whose daughter, who witnessed the abuse for years, according to the court ruling, should live with her father and see her mother twice a week.
The third story it is just as creepy as the previous ones.
– He first beat me when our child was six months old. I ran away, and when I returned, I was slapped. He attacked me the worst at a family celebration. He went to the room earlier. When I came to lie down, he first started attacking me and accusing me of not loving him. He attacked me, started beating me with his fists everywhere. I thought my arm was broken, I was all blue – says a woman who, after a courageous decision to leave the abuser, sought help in a shelter for victims of abuse. After the incident after the celebration, he continues, upon returning home he wanted to have a relationship.
– I turned him down and he went completely crazy. He started hitting me with his hands again, all over my body, hitting me with his hands and feet, then with his fists in the stomach, kicking me several times in the leg – our interlocutor recalls. He threatened her family and attacked, beat, snatched and strangled her. Until one time, when she decided to run away because she could no longer live like that.
– I continued my life without violence with my child – he concludes.
For a woman from the fourth Horror abuse stories began long before marriage. From her earliest childhood, she tells us, she witnessed scenes in which Dad would beat Mom and then her and the other children.
– As we grew, it got worse. He has sexually abused each of us at least once. I experienced this for the first time at the age of six, I hadn’t even gone to school yet. I was very scared, I didn’t understand anything. I confessed to my mom, but she didn’t believe me. I haven’t told anyone since. We grew up left to our own devices, Mom was on his side. Everyone told her to report him, but she didn’t – she was indignant. Meanwhile, the woman got married. Her husband did not beat her. But he also did not react to the verbal and physical abuse of his wife by his mother.
– I was eventually kicked out of the house. I had to leave the children. And again I found myself alone – the story. She divorced her husband and returned home. She lived, and as she says, as if she didn’t.
– I would not see my salary, I had to give all the money to my dad, I had nothing, I was constantly afraid for my life. I decided I didn’t want to live like that – he tells us and continues:
– One day I came home, he was angry, he grabbed my hand, dragged me here and there … He walked towards me, I saw the look I remember from my childhood. I got scared and ran away. Then something inside me broke and I reported it. But since this is his first report, he got away with it. She sought refuge in the Safe House. Now, for the first time in her life, she has the opportunity to save, try to get her children back, find an apartment and, as she says, live a new life.
The fifth woman talks us a gruesome experience she went through as a victim of her ex-husband’s abuse. He beat her for years.
– He would beat me every time he had a problem. He threatened to take my children, once he locked us all in the bathroom and let the gas out – our interlocutor recalls. He remembers as the worst moment the evening when, terribly drunk, he attacked her in front of the children.
– He threw me to the ground, jumped on me, hit me. The children saw everything. I was his punching bag many times. I was hoping it would change. Today I am happy to be alive – he concludes.
1330
criminal offenses against women were reported in 2020, and last year another 100 more
39,2%
the number of domestic violence offenses against women increased in 2020 compared to 2019.
14
women were killed last year. 11 of them were killed by men
Women are no longer safe in public either
Although violence in most cases takes place within the family, ie “within four walls”, recently there have been more and more cases of murder of women in public – in a cafe, shop and the like. Victims of gender-based violence can turn to safe houses and associations for help.