A 16-year-old teenager was murdered on the night of Monday, April 4, when she was stabbed six times by her 23-year-old partner. The femicide occurred in the room they rented in the Mayoreo sector in Managua. For the police, the reason was “discord”. Meanwhile, for women’s organizations, that is a euphemism for not naming the real reason: sexist violence.
“She was a girl, regardless of what is said, she was just a girl”. This is how the landlady of the teenager told 100% Noticias that, being injured, she managed to drag herself to ask for help.
“I was surprised to see her all bloody because I didn’t hear anything. I asked what happened and who did it? He answered his name (…) he vanished at my feet and died”he recounted.
The adolescent with the initials ZED was the mother of an eight-month-old baby and her femicide became, according to the Catholic organization for the Right to Decide (CDD), number 17 so far in 2022.
However, on the afternoon of April 5, when the Police presented Jerry José Condega Vanegas as the alleged perpetrator of the femicide of the Caribbean teenager, they indicated that the interviewed witnesses recognized him. “as author of (the) homicidal death”.
For the director of CDD, Marta Flores, this shows that we live “in a completely macho country” in which the State itself does not recognize that they are acts committed by gender violence. “Impunity reigns in the country and something that feeds it is the lack of justice and the belligerence that exists on the part of the authorities”lament.
He insisted that this is done because “towards the international gaze” the government wants to appear “that we are in a safe country, making this problem invisible”.
“Impunity also sends a message to these aggressors to continue being violent and committing criminal acts.”he explained.
March, the most violent month
The month of March has been, to date, the most violent for women, according to the most recent report by the CDD, an observatory that documents the violent deaths of Nicaraguan women, adolescents and girls. In that month they report eight femicides, almost half of those committed so far this year.
The 17 femicides that occurred between January and so far in April left 18 children and adolescents orphaned.
The main aggressors are ex-partners with seven cases, couples with four cases and strangers with four cases. Seven of the femicides occurred in the Caribbean of Nicaragua and two abroad.
Six of the femicides committed in Nicaragua went unpunished, six are in judicial proceedings and only one femicide has been sentenced so far. The last case will initiate a judicial process.
“The data from the observatory always show us the high levels of impunity, where there is no justice, and there are no in-depth investigations. On the contrary, there are always excuses from the authorities”Flores said.
The director of CDD said that the high number of cases of impunity reflect the lack of protection that women experience against violence perpetrated by men and the lack of commitment of the authorities to comply with the Comprehensive Law Against Violence Against Women (Law 779 ).
The home prevails as the most insecure space for women. Ten of the femicides occurred in the private sphere and seven in the public sphere.
Flores remarked that it is “terrible for women to have to live and go through this cycle of violence for as long as they live with the aggressor” then the violence “It increases until it reaches the extreme violence that is femicide.”.
As of the same date in 2021, 19 femicides had been registered. Last year in Nicaragua CDD reported that 71 femicides were committed, the same number that occurred in 2020.
Girls and adolescents in danger
According to the agency’s report of the 17 victims, three were between 13 and 17 years old, seven between 18 and 35, six between 36 and 59 years old. One victim was over 60.
“It is unfortunate how girls and adolescents are also being murdered every year and how they become fatal victims of machismo”Flores specified.
This Tuesday, April 6, the 17-year-old JPOA admitted without declaring that he was the one who murdered his girlfriend, also a teenager Britney Olivas Herrera, with 30 stabs on the night of March 10.
She was an announcer on the radio station Estéreo Libre 95.3 FM for three years and since she was a child she was part of the Jinotega Children’s Communicators. She was also a fifth-year high school student. The teenager, who was her boyfriend, wanted to force her to have an abortion.
“We are facing a femicide, and although it is true that the defendant is an adolescent, but do not forget that the victim was also an adolescent who deserved protection from the State and from a baby at the time, therefore, it is unthinkable to ask for another measure, given that Two lives were severed, Britney’s and the baby’s. Life must be protected from conception, could have been charged with a crime of induced abortion, but was subsumed as murder”argued the prosecutor Karen Rodríguez Idiáquez, reported the newspaper La Prensa.
At trial he was found guilty of the crime of femicide with the aggravating circumstances of aggravated murder. The Prosecutor’s Office requested the maximum penalty for an adolescent, which is six years in prison.
Britney’s mother, Alicia Herrera, was present at the hearing, asking for the maximum penalty for the murderer, since her daughter had dreams and goals, and she was pregnant. “Not even giving her the death penalty will they return my daughter to me, her parents can go see her, I have to go to my daughter’s grave”he claimed.
