By The Star Staff
Pointing out that in just over two weeks four women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners, Lisdel Flores Barger, the director of Hogar Ruth, urged governor-elect Jenniffer González Colón to call on various sectors of the government, private companies and nonprofits to form a united front with new strategies to stop femicides and violence against women.
“We can no longer continue to see, almost routinely, shocking deaths like that of the strangled woman who was then thrown out onto the street in a suitcase,” Flores said, referring to this past weekend’s slaying in Guánica of 37-year-old Annette Gaya Concepción, a crime for which her 25-year-old partner has been charged. “The value of the lives of women who are murdered because of an argument, because of jealousy, by sexist men who believe they own them is minimized. In just a few days there have been four femicides with women strangled, stabbed, shot. How many more do we have to see die in the place where they are supposed to feel safest, which is their home? How many more have to live with uncertainty and terrifying fear? The time has passed to unite in a true common plan to stop this absurd violence. We must save lives and create a society in which women and their children can live without fear.”
The director of Hogar Ruth, a community organization that has been serving the needs of survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking since 1984, highlighted that the governor-elect is sensitive to this issue and as resident commissioner in Washington supported funding for the Hogar Ruth women’s shelter, where the development of an integrated center to provide an array of services to victims under one roof will proceed. “This center seeks to be an innovative model and does not currently exist in Puerto Rico, as we did with the successful project of a Montessori Development Center, the only one within and outside the jurisdiction of Puerto Rico that serves the children of survivors with a Montessori model integrating trauma management.”
Flores suggested that this type of initiative and others focused on prevention should be replicated, and ways of implementing them must be a priority at all levels of government and in all social sectors in Puerto Rico.
She noted that during the four-year period since the PARE Committee was created, which in some instances was positive, more could have been done.
“Organizations like Hogar Ruth receive funds to work with the remedy and the funds are only intended to work with the service,” Flores said. “There is very little or almost nothing that we can do in terms of prevention and education. We recognize that this is everyone’s job, but we have fallen short as a country in campaigns that go to the core of the problem. I have maintained the importance of creating sustained campaigns through all the spaces of the services that are available and how these services are translated, which are those that a survivor can access to save their lives. For this, all sectors need a common goal so that the dissemination of guidance to victims of violence is necessary so that they can escape from the unsafe environment. [This is] in addition to continuing to insist on education, among the many things that we lack.”
Just this month, when the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women is to be commemorated on Nov. 25, killings of women have increased in Puerto Rico. Since Oct. 25, there have been four femicides: Claudia Martínez Suárez, 33, was strangled to death that day in her residence in Barrio Obrero; Janice Báez Gracia, 50, was shot to death in Hormigueros on Nov. 1; Yesenia González Ayala, 49, was stabbed to death in San Sebastián on Nov. 3; and Gaya Concepción, 37, was strangled on Saturday, Nov. 9 in Guánica and her body was thrown into the street in a cloth suitcase in front of a school. Their partners or ex-partners have been accused in the femicides, and some have confessed.
“At the shelter I run, Hogar Ruth, we save lives every day of women who escape with their children from an environment of violence,” said Flores, whose organization through its nine programs served 8,536 survivors and their children in 2023. “When speaking with the victims, I have seen the pain firsthand, the uncertainty and the restlessness. The first thing a victim mentions when receiving any of our services is to tell us that they were unaware of all this help and if they had known before they would not have been so afraid to leave. Leaving is difficult, but what happens in the process with us is truly hopeful. It is looking to the future with enthusiasm and betting on a new life that includes managing all the needs of the victim, their daughters and sons.”
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