Femicide Detective: Catching the Men Murdering Mexican Women | Foreign Correspondent

Video Description

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, an average of ten women are murdered every day. The head of Mexico City’s first Femicide Unit, Sayuri Herrera, believes the reason for the violence is simple. ‘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, Mexican women made their frustrations clear, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets in Mexico City. They were furious not only because of the high rates of violence but also because 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 the 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.” There are some confronting scenes. Ferguson meets a young woman in hospital as she recovers from a vicious knife attack at the hands of her ex-partner. ‘She was facing a real monster, the guy that did this to her’, says the woman’s brother. And 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 for investigating 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, says they’re doing their best to change 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 deaths of any more women.’ About Foreign Correspondent: Foreign Correspondent is the prime-time international public affairs program on Australia's national broadcaster, ABC-TV. We produce half-hour duration in-depth reports for broadcast across the ABC's television channels and digital platforms. Since 1992, our teams have journeyed to more than 170 countries to report on war, natural calamity and social and political upheaval – through the eyes of the people at the heart of it all. Contributions may be removed if they violate ABC’s Online Terms of Use http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm (Section 3). This is an official Australian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube channel