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DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Two-month-old baby in ICU in Spain after brutal beating by father

A two-month-old baby has been admitted into hospital in Barcelona after being viciously beaten by his 21-year-old father.

Published: 11 January 2019 15:50 CET
Two-month-old baby in ICU in Spain after brutal beating by father
Stock photo: AFP

Spanish society is in shock after yet another case of heart-wrenching domestic violence, this time involving a baby of little more than 60 days of age. 

According to Catalan police, the infant was brutally beaten by his father on Thursday at their family home in the coastal Barcelona county of Maresme.

When the baby’s mother took the child to Vall d’Hebron hospital, staff immediately suspected its head injuries were incurred during a beating, leading them to contact local Mossos d’Esquadra police.

Officers have since arrested the infant’s father as the main suspect.

The 21 year old is known to authorities for previous complaints involving domestic violence and now faces a charge of grievous bodily harm.

The child is currently in intensive care, with little other information being disclosed given his young age.

His mother’s state of health also remains unknown.

Spain is currently reviewing its penal code to incorporate stricter and more specific laws aimed at dealing with child abuse.

More than 100 complaints relating to physical abuse against children are recorded in Spain every day.
  

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Spain bans visitation rights for gender violence defendants

Parents being prosecuted for gender violence will no longer enjoy visitation rights with children that are not in their custody under a Spanish legal reform that came into force on Friday.

Published: 3 September 2021 15:33 CEST
Spain bans visitation rights for gender violence defendants
Photo: Georges Gobiy/AFP

The change affects any parent that is being prosecuted for an assault on the life, physical integrity, freedom, moral or sexual integrity of their partner or their children.

“No regime of visits or overnight stays will be set up, and if one already exists, it will be suspended in the case of a parent who is facing criminal proceedings,” says article 94 of the civil code.

It also applies to cases where a judge has accepted that there are “well-founded indications of domestic or gender-based violence”, it says.

But a judge could still authorise visits or contact “based on the best interests of the minor… following an assessment of the parent-child relationship,” it says.

The change does not affect those who have already been convicted of such offences, whose visitation rights are laid down in their sentence.

The reform was published in the official state bulletin at the start of June just days before police found the body of a six-year-old girl believed murdered by her father, who had snatched her and her baby sister in April.

Investigators believe the father — who had a history of domestic violence — also killed the toddler then committed suicide in a case that shocked Spain.

The six-year-old’s body was found on the seabed, wrapped in a bag weighted down with an anchor, but so far, police have not found any trace of the father and the missing toddler.

Since 2013, 41 minors have been killed by their fathers, or by a partner or ex-partner of their mothers, government statistics show, in a gender violence phenomenon known in Spain as “violence by proxy”.

READ ALSO: How the death of six-year-old Olivia is exposing Spain’s cruellest gender violence

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