Status: 25.11.2021 10:34 a.m.
When Yocairi Amarante separates from her partner, he hires acquaintances who burn her face with acid. It is not an isolated case – but the realization that such attacks against women must be punished comes late in the Dominican Republic.
The courtroom in Santo Domingo is filling up, every seat will soon be occupied. Behind it are the many camera teams. The three defendants are brought in handcuffed. Then Yocairi Amarante scurries into the room last. A plaster and large sunglasses cover the missing eye, but the many scars on the face are clearly visible.
Amarante was the victim of an acid attack with “Acido del Diablo”, devil’s acid – a mixture of different acids that are used, for example, to remove car paint. The alleged client: her ex-boyfriend and father of their daughter. He is said to have hired two of his friends to shower Amarante with the acid. All three are sitting in the dock, apparently completely uninvolved.
Life after the attack with “devil’s acid”
Xenia Böttcher, ARD Studio Mexico, 11/23/2021 8:30 a.m.
The act took place in September 2020. Surveillance cameras captured the moment when Amarante jumps out of a shared taxi: seconds before she was showered with devil acid by two motorcyclists. You can see her writhing in pain. “The pain was indescribable, there are no words for it. I could see the skin falling off my body, how the flesh turned black,” she describes it later.
The Dominican Republic, which is so popular with tourists – especially from Germany – has a problem that happens far away from the postcard beaches, mostly in the poorer districts: Acid attacks against women are not an isolated case.
Yocairi Amarante takes to the streets with sunglasses. The attack took away her confidence.
Image: ARD-Studio Mexico
Vengeance and possessiveness of men
The young woman was 19 years old and had just separated from her long-term boyfriend. The attack was his way of getting revenge, she says. 40 percent of her skin is burned: arms, chest, legs. The right eye is lost, with the other she sees blurred. Yocairi Amarante was a beautiful woman. Now it is drawn for life.
It is a death in life, says the 20-year-old: “I get sad when I think about how I looked before and how I look now. But I try not to think about the past, I try to put it behind me let say: I look good the way I am. ” When she came out of the hospital, her daughter was frightened and called her mother a monster. Since then, Amarante has tried to commit suicide twice.
There are no figures on how many women in the Dominican Republic are attacked with devil’s acid in revenge. Authorities speak of a few dozen. The plastic surgeon Severo Mercedes, who also treats Amarante, often has patients with severe acid burns: “It hurts when we have a patient who we know: No matter how much we do, we will never achieve what we really want “, he says and demands: The social phenomenon of such attacks must be investigated.
It hurts not to be able to undo Amarante’s burns, says surgeon Severo Mercedes.
Image: ARD Studio Mexico
Law enforcement rate is low
Around 1500 acid attacks against women are reported worldwide every year. The number of unreported cases is estimated to be higher. Mostly they are acts out of jealousy and masculine possession – with the aim of destroying a woman’s life forever.
Because people around them often turn away from the disfigured victims. They find it difficult to find a job, let alone a partner. And it is not uncommon for the victims to be asked skeptically whether they were not to blame for what happened to them, says Mercedes Taveras from the “Sembrando Esperanza” foundation. For decades, the Dominican Republic reacted only half-heartedly to the acid attacks, she complains: “It’s very difficult for us if you don’t have the support of the authorities. And so many cases remain in the air.”
Mercedes Taveras himself survived an acid attack, and the perpetrators were never brought to justice. Your foundation is a kind of self-help group in which those affected give each other strength and joy. Because the mood often fluctuates during a day. Again and again they fall emotionally into a black hole. They lack money for operations, money for travel to the capital, money for a trial.
The victims are only briefly in the spotlight – when a new attack has occurred. After that, it becomes quiet around her, complains Taveras: “We are asking for help because there are many of us. There are a few victims here, but there are people who do not dare to be in front of the camera.”
Amarante with her little daughter – when she saw the mother for the first time after the attack, she was afraid of the “monster”, says Amarante.
Image: ARD Studio Mexico
Maximum sentence: 30 years imprisonment
When a woman died in September after an acid attack, there was a riot: people took to the streets to protest. The pressure on politics is growing.
President Luis Abinader calls for the maximum sentence for acid attacks: thirty years in prison. So far, those in the Dominican Republic are not considered a separate criminal offense, often perpetrators get away with lower prison sentences or the investigations come to nothing.
An example is to be set in court on the men who attacked Yocairi Amarante with devil’s acid. Taveras hopes it won’t be just a show process to calm the minds.
In the courtroom, the prosecutor reads the text messages that Yocairi’s ex-boyfriend sent to the perpetrators on the day of the crime: “‘In the face, on the forehead’ – that’s what he wanted. He wanted to destroy what he could no longer have: hers Beauty.” He wanted to celebrate the deed with a beer, if it was successful.
After two hours of counseling, the verdict is reached: All three perpetrators are sentenced to the maximum penalty. Yocairi Amarante is fighting back tears: “I cry with happiness because my case did not go unpunished,” she says. “Justice was established.” Like so many women, she will have to continue to struggle with the consequences of the acid attack.