Supreme Court of Spain orders the Spanish state to compensate Angela Gonzalez for the murder of her daughter

Madrid, 20th July 2018: The Spanish Supreme Court has ordered the state to compensate Ángela González with 600,000 euros for its responsibility in the death of her seven-year-old daughter Andrea, who was murdered in 2003 by her father during an unsupervised custody visit ordered by a judge. Despite having reported her violent ex-husband before the authorities in more than 40 occasions, the system failed to protect her daughter. Angela has been represented by SRT grantee Women’s Link Worldwide since 2011.

Ángela Gonzalez said, ‘After fifteen years, the justice system finally gives me back my dignity. I hope that this Supreme Court ruling will help the justice system never again entrust any of our sons and daughters to an abusive father’.

In the decision, the Supreme Court recognised that Angela had suffered ‘a clear situation of discrimination, both before and after the death of her daughter’. It also established Spain’s obligation to comply with the 2014 decision of the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) that condemned Spain for failing to protect Ángela and her daughter.

Spain has avoided complying with the CEDAW decision for four years, citing the absence of mechanisms that would allow for the application of international rulings. The Supreme Court has now overturned this position and indicates that in the absence of a specific channel in the Spanish legal system that obliges compliance with international rulings, the judicial procedure used by Ángela and Women’s Link Worldwide has been adequate to demand compliance.

Gema Fernández, attorney at Women’s Link Worldwide, said, ‘This ruling represents a major step forward in protecting the rights of women victims of violence and their children. It is a historic sentence for Ángela because for the first time, a Spanish court agrees with her. It also has a very positive impact on our democracy by recalling that the State has an obligation to comply with international standards and ensure that human rights are respected’.

Full story from Women’s Link Worldwide website: https://www.womenslinkworldwide.org/en/news-and-publications/press-room/justice-for-angela