11 children saw their father kill their mother in the last year

• Galicia.The judge suspends parental rights to the man who killed his ex, his former mother-in-law and his former sister-in-law in front of their children
• Madrid. "Save my mother," the cry of the 10-year-old girl when she saw her father stab her mother six times

The two girls, aged 8 and 10, witnessed on Tuesday afternoon how their father assaulted and stabbed his mother to death when the three entered the portal of his building, in the Madrid neighborhood of Ciudad Lineal . The children ran to their home and one of them asked for help through the window: "Save my mother, save her, please."

Only 30 hours earlier, two other children, 4 and 7 years old, who were going to school like any Monday, saw their father holding a gun and ending in a few seconds with practically his whole family: his mother, his aunt and her grandmother. "These children face a double duel: the duel for the person or people - as in the case of Pontevedra -, who have been killed and, on the other hand, the duel of seeing their parent associated with that brutal violence , in addition to the trauma of having witnessed, "anticipates the situation faced by these children Raquel Castro , a child and youth psychologist who works with minors victims of gender violence, including orphans.

Since 2013, how many children were orphaned after their mother was killed at the hands of their partner or former partner - in most cases, the children's father - began to count, the number rises to 263: 32 in 2019; 40 in 2018; 26 in 2017; 29 in 2016; 51 in 2015; 43 in 2014 and 42 in 2013. What does not discriminate statistics is the number of those who have suffered the added trauma of witnessing the death of their mother. A review of the newspaper archive shows the figure of at least 11 in the last 12 months, 22 if we extend the count to two years ago.

In the list are, in addition to the four children of Valga and Madrid , the little German Jonas , 5, who on April 23 managed to escape from the cave of Adeje ( Santa Cruz de Tenerife ), where his father had taken the excursion family, after contemplating how he killed his mother and his older brother, 10 years old. The 15-year-old son of Gloria Tornay , murdered on March 10 in Estepona ( Málaga ), his father, the aggressor, threw him out of the house before committing the crime, so that the child heard how his mother was murdered while trying Knock down the door to enter the house and help her.

The adolescent son of Leonor Muñoz , 16, went out barefoot, wounded and bloody after trying unsuccessfully to prevent his father from stabbing his mother 10 times, on January 12, in Fuengirola (Málaga). The Senegalese Rokhaya in Monzón ( Huesca ) also died on stabbing on November 25, 2018, and her two children, aged 4 and 8, were witnesses. The newspapers illustrated the crime of Fatima , a Moroccan murdered on October 23, 2018 in Seville , with an image of a policeman throwing his 13-year-old son by the arm, who shouted at the neighbors asking for help seeing his mother It was stabbed in the street. The woman had another 9 year old daughter.

Psychologist Raquel Castro says that orphans of gender violence face a situation of "total pain." "The greatest fear that a child can feel in childhood is that they suddenly take away his mother, his attachment figure, on whom he depends affectively and the main source of satisfaction of his needs," he explains. "These children have to overcome many fears because they have lived a brutal traumatic experience, especially those who are witnesses, the feeling I am in danger, I am not protected, I am guilty, it will happen again ... They have an atrocious fear of new abandonment, "he adds.

The specialist explains that one of the things that most worries them is the uncertain future they face: "They wonder who will take care of me now, where they will take care of me, how they will take care of me ...". The psychologist opens the door to the question of what happens to the orphans of gender violence after the crime, who takes care of them. Many remain in the care of relatives, uncles or grandparents, always of the maternal branch, since the father is stigmatized by the murder. This is the most convenient scenario for minors, but it does not always happen that they have someone close in their immediate surroundings, especially when it comes to children of immigrant families.

The children of Senegalese Rokhaya, aged 4 and 8, had to move to live from Monzón (Huesca) to Tarrasa ( Barcelona ) with an uncle who was granted adoption. The son of Fatima, 13, who appears in the photograph attended by a police officer, was taken into custody by the Junta de Andalucía . Several families from Lepe ( Huelva ) offered to take in the two daughters of the Romanian Cristina M. , who were 2 and 5 years old, when her mother was murdered by her ex-husband on July 7, 2018. Finally, custody was granted to a maternal aunt who lived in a village in Romania , with which the girls had to start a new life in a country unknown to them.

"In order for the child to begin to duel and not become a pathological, sickly duel, they have to have an explanation of the loss, so it is important to work with the caregivers, guide them on what information to give the children and how to contain them on an emotional level, "says Raquel Castro. "They have to place the loss in the past, do an exercise that here and now begins a change and, finally, assume a new identity without the person who has been taken from them."

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