Iria Puente lives day after day the consequences of gender violence. Her daughter, a three-year-old girl with autism spectrum disorder and functional language impairment, must go weekly to meet her father, convicted of mistreatment, at the family meeting point in Lanzarote. A recurring episode that awakens in the minor "stress, aggressiveness and night terrors", according to the testimony of her mother and that has pushed a health worker to ask that "the characteristics" of the minor be "taken into account" and to request "a coordination meeting with the people responsible for the space".
A family meeting point is a specialized resource that seeks to facilitate children "in an individualized program" the relationship with their parents in conflict situations. The Government of the Canary Islands itself states on the website about this space that it is "undeniable that children who grow up in an environment of gender violence are direct victims" and that this place must "guarantee the safety of minors" and "carry out a psychosocial intervention" to "repair and strengthen family ties".
Her ex-partner and father of her daughter threatens to kill her, he is even convicted of intimidating her: "I'm going to burst you, if you come home I'll burn your things with you inside", he told her. Currently, two complaints are still pending resolution, one that she filed with the Court for breach of sentence and another for an alleged crime of coercion.
Since June 2024, her abuser has a restraining order that prohibits him from approaching her within 300 meters and also from communicating, at least, until June 2026, two years after the court ruling. However, they must meet every Friday in this space. While waiting for the custody of the minor to be resolved, the former couple has provisional measures to make visits at this meeting point. "We are considering whether he is psychologically prepared to have the girl, because I have suffered psychological violence for more than four years" and "constant threats towards the girl, telling me that the day it was her turn she was going to disappear".
According to a report that La Voz has had access to, recently a pediatrician from the Canarian Health Service has ratified the suspicions that Puente had and a previous health diagnosis, her daughter has autism, "problems recognizing her name, does not speak and does not tolerate physical approach".
In these circumstances, her mother describes the odyssey of taking the minor, every Friday, to visits with her father. "It is a suffering to leave her there, in a closed place, pressured", she confesses during an interview with this editorial staff. "I leave her crying, kicking and calling me desperately, they close the door in my face, and I pick her up the same way, saying "open, open, open" for them to open the door. The visits generate stress and then she is altered all weekend, I can't even move from her sight", she continues.
For Iria Puente, at the family meeting point, located in Arrecife, "they are not acting appropriately" and argues that the space "is not a place for a girl with those difficulties". In addition, she states that since the girl attends these visits, she demands even more her presence. "Every time I have to leave her there for me as a mother is a suffering, but for my daughter it is double. The girl doesn't want to", she adds.
"He has fulfilled all the threats he has made to me, he only needs to make the girl disappear"
To appease her daughter, despite the fact that the restraining order is in force, Puente assures that she has to enter the meeting point room with her abuser so that the minor calms down. "They are putting my safety at risk and I know it, I see that my daughter touches my hand and calls me and then I agree and enter. It is very tense because I am afraid of my daughter's father. I go in there, I am with the girl for a while and when she gets distracted I leave. That psychologically makes me feel like a bad mother because I understand that I am deceiving my daughter, because suddenly the girl does not see me".
Her experience at the meeting point has made this victim of gender violence feel "as if she were the aggressor" because on other occasions she must leave the girl at the door and leave, without time for the minor to adapt to the environment. Seeing the difficulties that her daughter encounters to stay in the place, Iría Puente has sought, without success for the moment, "to reach an understanding so that the girl is comfortable", and even assures that from the Insular Center for Attention to Women (CIAM) have proposed to offer a space more adapted to the minor to hold the meetings.
During her relationship with her abuser, Iría remembers that she slept next to her daughter's crib and held her hand all night. "I had the feeling that he could do something to her", she adds. Specifically, she remembers an episode in which her ex-partner took the girl to the park and, although she called him, he did not answer the phone. "I got in the car, went to look for him in the park and couldn't find him, I kept calling him desperately and then I got to my house at about eight o'clock at night, he was there and he said to me: Were you scared?"
"He threatened to kill my daughter, I can't stop thinking that at some point he will get out of there and I don't know what will happen. He has fulfilled all the threats he has made to me, he only needs to make the girl disappear", concludes this mother, who demands fair treatment for her daughter in these visits.
