Difficulties that prevent the search for a girl victim of an avalanche - Other Cities - Colombia

The persistent winter and the lack of work tools have prevented the search for the minor in a large area of ​​the municipality of San Pablo, in Nariño, after the avalanche caused by the sudden rise of the La Brisa creek in the afternoon last Friday.

“This February 20 we will continue the search for my niece Gabriela Gálvez in São Paulo, I thank everyone for their support,” Cristina Escobar, aunt of the 8-year-old girl who has disappeared since then, wrote on one of the social networks. when the serious emergency occurred.

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According to the revelation of the commander of the San Pablo Volunteer Fire Department, Second Lieutenant José Harold Figueroa, the main objective that the relief agencies have set for themselves is to find the girl, despite the inconveniences that have been recorded in the area.

Almost a hundred rescuers with the support of members of the Public Force are carrying out the work that will allow the girl to be found very soon.

“Unfortunately we have not been able to find it so far,” he assured and confessed that the needs that relief agencies currently have are concentrated in the lack of work tools such as ropes or handles and chainsaws, which allow them to attend in a more efficient way. and fast this kind of emergencies caused by nature.

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Although the General Directorate of Firefighters recently delivered a vertical rescue kit to the municipality, he added that “there are other relief agencies that do not have such equipment, which means that there is a great shortcoming.”

But the other difficulty that the lifeguards and members of the National Police and the Army are facing is that the intense rains do not stop in the municipality, “That same ravine can grow at the least expected moment, so we put our units at risk”.

The La Brisa ravine that caused the avalanche flows into the Mayo River, which at this time registers a very high flow due to the permanent rains, “what we want is for its level to drop so that we can continue the search for the girl.”

The IDEAM forecasts regarding the weather in the region are not very favorable, according to the commander “it seems that much more intense rains could occur in the afternoon hours of this Sunday, then we would have to suspend the search.”

For now, the rescuers of the Fire Department, Civil Defense and the National Army are advancing in the search tasks, as long as the weather conditions allow it in three different areas that have been identified; the first covers from the Los Samanes bridge, where the girl disappeared, to El Cementerio; the second goes from El Cementerio to the La Represa sector and the third from La Represa to La Chorrera.

The preliminary balance

According to the preliminary balance that the authorities have managed to establish, the emergency in that Nariño locality leaves 16 neighborhoods affected, 350 homes with damage, in 12 villages there are difficulties in communication routes and the aqueduct that supplies the population is also out of service. , so now the water is supplied to the inhabitants with tank trucks.

The authorities have faced difficulties in finding the minor.

Photo:

Colombian National Army

The governor of Nariño, Jhon Rojas, who has been in this town in the north of the department since Saturday, said that “we call for solidarity since the nursing home is affected and the elderly are currently in the parish house” .

He pointed out that the population at risk was temporarily transferred to the Normal School, while progress is being made in reestablishing the drinking water service.

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“A technical visit is made to determine the possibility of the community’s return, as long as there is no risk of possible new landslides,” said the sectional president.

From the city of Pasto, a tank car from the Fire Department with a capacity of 2,700 gallons was mobilized on Saturdayas well as 2 dump trucks and 1 platoon from the 23rd Engineer Battalion, in order to help with the cleaning of the roads and homes.

Milena Ortega, the owner of a store who was able to watch helplessly as the force of the current from the creek passed through her house, dragging as many motorcycles and bicycles as it found in its path, commented that “we had never seen this here before, it was horrible because it did not stop to rain and many of the neighbors tried to recover their motorcycles but they could not”.

MAURICIO OF THE ROSE
PASTURE

Sexual violence: the bond with the victim

This is one of the main conclusions of the first SEXVIOL report, which starts from the analysis of 178 sentences issued by the Provincial Court of Madrid between 2016 and 2018, sentences all of them associated with prosecution processes of assault with sexual violence.

But there are other myths or stereotypes, such as the nocturnal, the time or the area in which sexual assaults occur and that this report dismantles.

This is how he explains it to EFEsalud Esmeralda Ballesteros Doncelone of its authors and a member of SEXVIOL, a group made up of teachers and researchers from four Spanish public universities (UCM, U. de Jaén, UC3M and U. de Valencia) who collaborate in the study of sexual violence in Spain, from a comparative perspective.

Recorded Incident: Sexual violence is a crime that has not stopped increasing since official statistics were available in Spain.

In 1989, 5,770 complaints were registered and in 2018 its magnitude was estimated at 13,782, 80% corresponding to the most aggravated crimes (sexual assault and abuse), according to sources from the Interior Ministry: Report on crimes against freedom and sexual indemnity in Spain 2019.

Actual incidence: The propensity to report sexual violence is very low. It is estimated that of every 100 sexual assaults only 12 are reported, the rest are silenced.

The real rape myth: The social and media characterization of the attacks has been built around an unfounded myth that identifies the assault of an unknown aggressor, with a pathological profile, who attacks violently at night, in an isolated place and by surprise.

The victim defends himself tenaciously and, consequently, the aggression causes injuries, traumatisms or death.

Sexual violence: the bond with the victim

However, and according to the SEXVIOL group, the main findings of this research deny some myths:

Link.- In more than 80% of sexual assaults there was previously some kind of link between victim and perpetrator. In 17.4% the bond was intimate (partner or ex-partner).

Unknown perpetrators account for 19.1% of sexual assaults.

Place.- Homes are the place where most sexual assaults are committed (60.1%), followed by public spaces (20.2%).

Weapons.- The use of weapons only appears in 13.5% of the cases of sexual assault prosecuted.

extreme violence.- In 90% of the attacks extreme violence is not used.

In 4.6% of the sentences, the victims present serious or fatal injuries; more than half of the cases reported minor injuries (51.5%); In 31.5% of the cases, no lesions were identified.

Time of the day.-The time of day in which the sexual assaults occur is irrelevant: 45.2% took place during the day compared to 54.8% that occurred at night.

The myth of the herds.- Group sexual assaults represent 2.8% of the total sentences analysed.

The research by Cazorla (2021) on the analysis of 244 sentences with multiple perpetrators, handed down in Spain between 2005 and 2020, also clarifies that 63.5% of the group was a duo and 21.3% was a trio.

Sexual violence is gender violence.- 95.5% of the victims of sexual assault were women. 99.4% of perpetrators are men.

Sex offenders do not respond to an antisocial or pathological pattern.- 70.2% of the perpetrators did not have a criminal record of any kind. 1.7% of the defendants had a history of sexual assault.

PHOTO EFE/Quique Garcia

Sexual violence: victims need respect

The members of SEXVIOL consider that the victims of sexual violence do not need our pity, they demand our respect.

They defend that the dignity of the victims can only be restored “if we contribute to raising awareness, raising awareness, producing proven scientific knowledge… if we manage to illuminate the shadows in which the myths remain…”.

Also, if we work to “have resources to prosecute crime, if sufficient accompanying services, legal advice and specialized care are established to attend to the physical, psychological, social and affective-sexual damage that cause these aggressions against the freedom and autonomy of women, girls and boys.

In this sense, Emerald Ballesteros advocates expanding the expert assessment of the effect of aggression, “because there is a predominant biological culture that leads to pointing out the marks or signs that the aggressor leaves on the victim’s body, but there is no mention of the change of life that this type supposes of aggression for the victim.

“You don’t talk about your fear of living, your difficulty establishing affective relationships, your social self-isolation, your depressive periods… It’s about social and mental health damage that must begin to be collected.”

The sociologist and university professor also draws attention to the culture of silencing that prevails in society and that has done so much damage to the victims with close ties to the aggressor.

“That covering, covering and covering to also avoid the stigma towards the victims.”

Finally, he considers that there must be a design change in public policies, in light of some data, such as the link between victim and aggressor, and adds that “no one is free from suffering sexual violence and no one is expendable at work to its eradication”.

The group Sexviolenceits members explain, was born “under the influence of the bloody aggression known as the 2016 San Fermín case” .

«From this social questioning, different researchers, shaken by the news, weaved a small network of debates on the seriousness of the event, the development of the judicial process and its media resonance, adopting an activist commitment with a view to contributing to the scientific knowledge of the sexual violence in Spain.

Thus, this research group began a work project in 2017 with two objectives: to find out the statistical incidence of sexual assaults in Spain and to explore the characteristics of this form of crime through a content analysis of court rulings relating to this type of assault, while promoting seminars and initiatives aimed at young people and adults.