Guía para familiares y amigas/os de adolescentes víctimas de violencia de género

This guide has the purpose of accompanying, guiding and advising family members and friends of adolescents who suffer gender violence in their relationship, with the intention of providing them with resources through readings and experiences, allowing them to understand how it affects . psychologically this type of relationship in the mind and behavior of your daughter/friend, as well as to help them face such a situation in a more appropriate and accompanied way.

A tour will be made of the main aspects of adolescence in order to understand the vulnerability of this evolutionary stage in its relationship with violent and sexist behaviors, and then delve into the mechanisms that predispose, precipitate and maintain these behaviors in adolescents.

All the information contained in this guide is based on a scientific basis, with explanatory theories from authors who work in the field of gender violence in adolescents, on their professional experience in this field and on empirically based information extracted from the testimonies collected from girls and family members who have gone through a situation of gender violence.

These stories are real testimonies from adolescent victims of gender violence and from fathers and/or mothers from specialized services. The reasons that make a teenager enter into a violent relationship are multi-causal factors as addressed throughout the guide, but one of the main ones is based on the education and the model that they have experienced at home.

Adolescents who have lived with unrecognized microviolence and micromachismo in the family grow up normalizing behaviors and assuming them within their own belief system. Many of the families with teenage daughters who end up in a relationship of gender violence are identified in situations of invisible violence, perhaps they have not gone to adulthood as in the case of their daughters, but they are enough for them to perpetuate them and perhaps accentuate them in your own story.

With all this, the importance of our work as a society, parents, of getting involved in their recovery is emphasized, making our speech coherent with our actions. Invisible violence is found in all strata of our society, many of which coexist without being aware of it. It will only be by identifying them and trying to defeat them that we can change the history learned over so many years. Our participation as adults in this change is necessary to promote new generations free of sexist violence.