Gender violence in Ecuador seems unstoppable

In Ecuador 6 out of 10 women have suffered some kind of gender violence; Morona Santiago, Tungurahua and Pichincha are the provinces with the highest rates on domestic violence registered in the country, according to data provided by the first National Survey of Family Relations and Violence Against Women, carried out by the INEC.

The study identified that while in the country, 1 out of 4 women (25.7%) have suffered sexual violence, psychological violence is the most recurrent form of gender violence with 53.9%. Following the physical violence, with 38%, and the hereditary violence, with 35.3 percent.

In recent days a series of events have alerted the country, such as the rape of a 70-year-old woman who accused Jose Daniel Marcillo Moreira, 27 years old, of raping her last Wednesday when she went to visit the tomb of her son.

“He said give me the money that you have.” I told him I didn’t have any money. He pulled out a knife and told me then I will kill you”. “I asked him not to kill me, then he said to me: Then I will rape you”; she filed the complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office and said she was outraged over a grave of the Central cemetery. Yesterday, the subject was sent to the  Santo Domingo prison with a preventive detention order.

In the same city, the head of the Judicial Police, Juan Carlos Iza, indicated that a man who was arrested on Tuesday, admitted the accusations made by his daughter for having raped her for  fifteen years, who is now a mother of two children that apparently would be the result of the sexual abuse to which she was subjected.

Meanwhile, in the city of Guayaquil a 45-year-old woman reported Pedro Vicente García, former pastor of a church in Guayaquil, for the alleged rape and indecent assault of her three daughters. The woman said that when she went to report it to the Church, she  learned that from Easter he had been expelled since other persons had denounced him for sexual abuse.