The one in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has assumed the authority to investigate the alleged abduction of a minor committed by a man as a possible case of vicarious violence. According to the complaint, the person under investigation kept his daughter with him for five months in Malaga without the mother’s consent and against the current visitation regime. The decision, advanced by the Superior Court of Justice of the Canary Islands (TSJC), represents a relevant step in the legal interpretation of the use of sons and daughters as an instrument of harm to women.
The case has its origins on April 20, when the person under investigation did not return the eight-year-old girl to her habitual residence in , despite not having been assigned custody or any judicial authorization to modify the stay regime. The minor was transferred to Malaga, where she lived for a period of five months with the father and his new partner, until on October 10, a court resolution ordered her immediate return to the mother.
Judge María Auxiliadora Díaz defends in her order that the father’s alleged conduct could fit within the concept of vicarious violence, that is, the strategy of inflicting harm on sons or daughters with the aim of psychologically or emotionally harming the woman. The order also recalls that this assumption of jurisdiction is supported by Consultation 4/2025 of the State Attorney General’s Office, which establishes that specialized courts can investigate cases of child abduction when they involve acts of gender violence.
The resolution not only investigates a possible crime of child abduction, but also a crime of habitual abuse, “without prejudice to a subsequent classification.” In this sense, the order explains that “during the entire coexistence”, the investigated person addressed her with insults and expressions such as “BAD MOTHER, WITHOUT ME YOU ARE NOBODY, YOU DISGUST ME…” him to Fuerteventura. “Little by little, the person under investigation began to have an explosive and unstable character.” The decisions, the order explains, “were made by him and she initially accepted it, because she was emotionally dependent.”
The judge emphasizes that in this matter there are two types of criminal offenses, which would reinforce the jurisdiction of the specialized court. However, it goes further by stating that even in the absence of a second crime, the abduction of minors could be considered an act of violence against women when the instrumentalization of boys or girls to harm them is proven: “Any of the actions included in article 225 of the Penal Code constitutes, in itself, an act of violence or intimidation towards women” in such circumstances.
The order includes a set of alleged “humiliations and coercion” attributed to the investigated person, which would have been committed against his ex-partner during the period in which he kept the minor with him. Among them is the false accusation to the mother of alleged injuries suffered by the girl, when these, the magistrate explains, would have occurred in a school accident while she was doing sports. The resolution indicates that these facts could be “subsumed” in the crime of habitual abuse, without excluding the existence of a real concurrence of crimes given the diversity of the protected legal assets.
In addition, the judicial body has imposed a restraining order on the man under investigation and prohibition of communication with his daughter for the duration of the investigation, in order to protect the minor and avoid interference in the investigation.
The decision to take on the case, which had initially been sent to an ordinary investigative court, has a favorable report from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, a determining element in a matter that the magistrate herself describes as “new” in the area of jurisdiction. The resolution is subject to appeal.
Telephone 016 assists victims of sexist violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not registered on the telephone bill, but the call must be deleted from the device. You can also contact via email and by WhatsApp at the number 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, you can call 112 or the National Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062) telephone numbers. And if you cannot call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
