Women report only a quarter of cases of sexual violence

Carolina Gomez Mena and Jessica Xantomila

Newspaper La Jornada
Sunday March 12, 2023, p. 8

Rape against women, adolescents, and girls is one of the crimes whose reporting has increased in recent years. In the second year of the pandemic (2021), the registered cases were 21,189, while 2022 closed with 23,102.

In the comparison between January 2022 and the same month this year, the increase is 26 percent, going from 1,428 to 1,799, according to figures from the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System.

Sexual violence is one of the least documented because women know that by reporting they will be revictimized and questioned in their sexual life, approximately a quarter of the cases are reported, that is really worryingpointed to the day María de la Luz Estrada, general coordinator of the National Citizen Observatory on Femicide (OCNF).

Regarding re-victimization, Isabel Suárez Terrazas, a lawyer specializing in gender from Idheas Strategic Human Rights Litigation, cited the case of a minor. First he spoke with the Public Ministry, then with the police, then with the psychologist and the doctor. All this in one day, on four occasions she had to tell what happened to her. It is for this reason, he added, that the victims no longer continue with the complaints.

Estrada indicated that the penal type of these crimes has not been modified, the only thing that has been achieved is to generate guidelines for the application of NOM-046 regarding the legal interruption of pregnancy in case of rape.

Official data indicates that in January the federal entity with the most complaints of rape was the state of Mexico, with 273; followed by Mexico City, 216; Nuevo Leon, 137; Chihuahua, 105; Hidalgo, 96; Oaxaca, 77; Baja California and Quintana Roo, with 62. However, if the complaints per 100,000 inhabitants are observed, the list is headed by Quintana Roo, 3.38; Hidalgo, 3.01; Chihuahua, 2.69; Mexico City, 2.41, and Nuevo León, 2.35.

Suárez Terrazas regretted that the authorities in courts and agencies of the Public Ministry do not know or put into practice what is established in the General Law on Women’s Access to a Life Free of Violence. It seems that the only way they have a gender perspective is by litigating; that is, that there is a legal advisor who tells them how they should do their job to prevent the victim from also suffering institutional violence.