focus is to invest more heavily in prevention

A 42-year-old woman, Mabel Laisi Orso, was killed by her 24-year-old boyfriend on October 21, in Bairro Nova Esperança. The killer was arrested two days later, on Monday, October 23. This case in Balneário Camboriú is one of more than 40 registered in Santa Catarina this year alone. The situation is alert and the focus of the Civil Police and the victim support network is prevention and encouraging victims to report. Mabel, for example, had never reported the man who took her life.

Strengthening the support network so that more women report

Councilor Juliethe Nitz, from Balneário Camboriú, believes that although femicide is widely publicized nowadays, it is still necessary to strengthen and intensify the fight against this crime that is leading Santa Catarina to reach its highest level of victims in the last four years (39 in 2020, 31 in 2021, 40 in 2022 and 43 in 2023 – numbers recorded from January to September of each year).

“In the first nine months of this year, 43 women were victims of femicide in Santa Catarina and this number has been increasing more and more due to the intolerance that people have towards each other. As a councilor, I have been engaged in combating, supporting and assisting women who are victims of violence, working since 2017 to intensify and strengthen the support network to raise awareness among women to free themselves from violence and not become part of this statistic”, she says. .

Juliethe also points out that enabling the support network to receive women who are going through a situation of violence is the first step in encouraging the victim to seek help.

“Violence, in most cases, does not begin with aggression, but with threats and violations of rights. If the woman who is going through this knows and trusts that she will be received without judgment and with the humanity that is expected, it will be one less barrier to be broken to put an end to this cycle and stop her from becoming a victim of feminicide”, he states.

DPCAMI also defends the importance of prevention

Delegate Ruth Henn, who works at the Police Station for the Protection of Children, Adolescents, Women and the Elderly (DPCAMI) of Balneário Camboriú, says that they seek to act in prevention so that feminicides do not occur, seeking to encourage women at the first signs to seek the police station and file a report.

“Not that it will prevent feminicide from happening, but it will reduce it. The girl who passed away [Mabel] he had not registered a single police report against the aggressor nor had he requested a protective measure. There was also a recent femicide in Itajaí, where the victim had never registered or taken a protective measure. The protective measure is prevention for women,” she says.

Ruth points out that it is rare for a case where the man immediately kills the woman, and that normally the situation starts with swearing, with the aim of humiliating, can come with a slap and culminate -or not- in feminicide.

“You have to cut this evil out at the beginning. At DPCAMI in Balneário, all women who attend, regardless of the severity of the case they are being victims of, we already offer a protective measure, which is prevention because the aggressor will receive a summons from the court official, a measure granted by a judge. You will feel afraid of doing something serious because you are already being monitored. Remembering that failure to comply with the protective measure allows for arrest in the act and preventive detention may be issued,” she adds.

Many reporting channels

The delegate emphasizes that it is essential that women report it, as well as family members and neighbors, and that there are anonymous reporting channels such as 180 and disk 100 and there is also the SC Civil Police website, where it is even possible to request a protective measure .

“There are several ways to make a report. Just look, there will always be a police station open and all security forces take special care with the issue of domestic violence. At DPCAMI we have already carried out almost 700 investigations this year and almost 80% are about domestic violence, seeking to prevent the worst from happening”, he informs, remembering that the Military Police (190) and the Municipal Guard (199) also receive complaints.

Lilac Room

Balneário Camboriú also has the Lilás Room, which was recently installed at the Police Duty Center (CPP) on Rua Virgínia, in Bairro das Nações.

There are women who need support when DPCAMI is closed.

The Room was specially created for victims, with clean clothes, cosmetics, police support, internet and even a kids space so women can take their children.

“The Lilac Room seeks to provide comfort and dignity for women at this time. The woman is already a victim, she arrives very shaken, and having this space to offer dignity at this moment makes all the difference”, adds delegate Ruth.