María Salmerón Sent to Jail

By Mara Ricoy Olariaga @MaraMatria / Matriactivista

An update in the case of María Salmerón in Spain, a mother who has been battling justice for over twenty years. Her only crime was to stop her abusive ex-husband from seeing their daughter. For background, first read: Who Would Leave a Child with a Violent Man?

It is a sunny afternoon in Scotland and I find myself googling details about embassies and how to lock oneself to something in an act of protest. I am thinking handcuffs, I am thinking hunger strikes… I am not thinking, I am feeling, and it is rage, rage is now directing my thought processes. While my rational brain tries to rescue me by reminding me that I am feeling this way for a woman and a daughter who I barely know. But my rage insists: “what if we all go to jail with her and say that we want to come in, 2000, 5000 of us…” My activist brain can't stop when faced with injustice, and the WhatsApp from Maria Salmerón’s daughter has triggered that response.

“Please let me know if there is any news” I have asked Miriam as gently as I can. A few moments later a succinct “she has to enter prison in 15 days voluntarily” appears on my screen. My brain gets stuck in the absurdity of the protocol, “voluntarily”, she “has to”, “voluntarily”? And then a link to a Spanish article which goes into further detail about the terrible news. Maria Salmerón, whose crime was not adhering to a law that didn’t protect her or her daughter, and therefore refusing to follow the rules that back in 2001 forced her to share her daughter with an abusive ex-husband, has been notified that no more pardons are coming her way, despite paying 3000 euros as a compensation to the ex-husband (thanks to her many supporters) and regardless of a written request by an association of female lawyers and judges, she will have to go to prison, “voluntarily”.

And I feel anger from every cell in my body, anger towards an inescapable system that judges women, regardless of how much of a victim they are. We are always judged in the street, at home and by the headlines, but also by the sentences and trials of other women like us. And in particular, abused mothers in Spain seem to endure punishments that have become the stiff neck, high brow, judicial version of the classic “she shouldn't have done x, y, z”.

And funny enough, we women are the first ones doing a similar list mentally, I should never have gone out with him, I shouldn't have marry him, I shouldn't have had a baby with him, I should have resisted, fought back, run away, etc…We wish we could have done different because the argument of us being responsible for other people’s crimes is so internalised, we also believe ourselves at fault.

And of course we are not, we simply do things that the other half of the population does, and just because we believe we should be able to. But when we women actually end up with an abusive husband, and let's make that a bit more clear, that means ending up with someone who shouts at us, makes us feel very small, hits us and rapes us, basically ending up living with a criminal. We are victims, we are the ones who need defence. And when someone like Maria Salmerón became a mother in the middle of such an ordeal, the only logical, human, motherly and normal reaction was to refuse to comply with a law that forced her and her daughter to acknowledge a criminal as a father figure and not to cooperate with him to try to behave like one. A law no longer applicable but still affecting her.

And in the insanity that allows this inexplicable injustice to take place in a court, the Spanish Government that continues to self identify in the times of make-believe, as a feminist one, does nothing about it. Today I am so enraged that even the famous helpline promoted by the so-called Ministry of Equality in Spain, the 016 for abused women to call when in need, feels offensive to me. And when I think as to why I want to chain myself up, or start a hunger strike, it goes back to my memories of my childhood with an abusive father and when I question what infuriates me so much about the political hypocrisy, it also goes back to my childhood, as my father just like the government seems to be doing yet again, pretended the farce that he was caring and loving while abusing us indoors.

None of this is acceptable, to me is miles away from being anywhere near justice. María paying a fortune to her abuser, to the court, Maria having to bargain via a statement to ask for clemency, asking for instead of a jail sentence, maybe more community work. Maria 20 years of battling the impossible penalties, Maria now being told that her ex husband wants her home mortgaged to pay him, María still only thinking of protecting her daughter in the middle of madness. María once again, right at the centre of all this while we don't even mention the criminal who ruined their lives and continues to do so. The man who was sentenced to 21 months in prison for abusing his wife and never sat one day in jail. The man who is, as it happens too often in these cases, the real protagonist, conveniently forgotten when women are on trial.

I don’t know what else we can do, I haven't decided yet what is more powerful, the sword or the pen, me chaining myself to an embassy or writing an article from abroad.

I guess for words to be mightier than swords they need to have the weight of responsibility and be shouted collectively. I guess I need everyone who reads this to be as furious as I am for this injustice that speaks volumes about the treatment of women still, still today. We need María Salmerón to be free, we need her to be able to mother her daughter as she persistently has tried to do. We need her healthy and debt-free, we need them both relieved from the anxiety they are suffering, but most importantly we need the governments and justice systems to stop attacking, judging and punishing women for the crimes of men.