They’re called Femicide Units; Mexico’s special teams of detectives, lawyers and doctors set up to investigate violent crimes against women.
They’re the country’s solution to an entrenched problem. In the land of machismo, on average ten women are murdered every day.
The head of Mexico City’s first Femicide Unit, Sayuri Herrera, is clear about the reasons behind the violence.
“Discrimination. Hate for who we are. It is an attempt to keep us in the place and role that society has assigned for us.”
Last year, women’s anger erupted onto the streets of Mexico City. Tens of thousands gathered to show their fury, not only with the high rates of violence but also with the fact that the men were getting away with it.
Herrera admits that old school policing wasn’t working, that police weren’t believing women’s stories.
“More weight was given in investigations to the partner’s version,” she says.
In this compelling true crime episode, correspondent Sarah Ferguson goes on the road with Mexico’s City’s femicide detectives, following them as they visit crimes scenes, gather evidence and solve cases.
“It’s very important to have women police,” says one of the female detectives. “We can put ourselves into the victim’s shoes. And tomorrow, it might be our family members, our mother…even ourselves.”
Ferguson witnesses some raw and confronting scenes.
She visits the blood-strewn apartment of a woman who’s been the victim of a vicious knife attack at the hands of her ex-partner. Her brother watches on as police comb for clues.
“She was facing a real monster, the guy that did this to her,” says the woman’s brother.
Later, she meets the woman in hospital.
“In Mexico not all cases have justice,” she says. But she’s optimistic about the work of the Femicide Unit. “I hope that justice in this case is final.”
Outside Mexico City, Ferguson speaks with the distraught mother of thirteen-year-old Melany who was kidnapped and killed last December. Melany’s cross is pink, marking her death as a femicide.
But here, there are fewer police resources to investigate femicides and Melany’s mother has no confidence the police will catch the killer.
“The only thing I can say is that we’re in Mexico and there is a lot of impunity. So, it’s impossible they’re going to catch him.”
The Minister for Women in Mexico City, Ingrid Saracibar, acknowledges that governments have a long way to go in reforming Mexico’s police culture.
“An institution that’s as vertical, as masculine as that of the police takes hard work to change’, she says. ‘But of course, we aren’t satisfied. We don’t want to count the death of any more women.”
