You may have seen it on my social media: my daughter and I were there, at the protest march against violence against women, organized by the new Dolle Mina’s, a Dutch protest group that started in the 70ies for women rights.
I don’t like crowds, noise, or confrontation. I also don’t like cities, especially Rotterdam. Of course, Rotterdam is a beautiful city, where old meets new. But it’s also the city where painful memories live. Walls I was thrown against. Faces of people who hurried past while my partner hit me. Threats that I wouldn’t survive if I didn’t listen to him.
But I survived. Something many women never get to tell. Every week, a woman dies as a result of domestic violence. Every week, a child loses a mother, a parent loses a daughter, to something that could have been prevented. I was young when it happened to me. The police I turned to at the time didn’t listen.
“It’s his word against yours. There’s nothing we can do.” They told me and I was send away
I no longer felt safe in my own country. I wanted to leave the Netherlands, but life threw another curve ball and I had to stay.
Years later, despite trying to raise my daughter to be wiser and stronger so it wouldn’t happen to her, she ends up at the police station too.
“Are you sure about what happened? You know false reporting is a crime, right?”
My heart sinks. After all these years, nothing has changed in the Netherlands.
And now, another ten years have passed. In one week, three women are murdered. Three.
It gets dismissed as a “family tragedy.”
So when I saw the call for the protest march in Rotterdam, I forwarded it to my daughter right away. She replied immediately:
“I’ll pick you up at 11:30!”
I have no idea where my ex lives. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. Still, that feeling of fear creeps in every time I’m in Rotterdam. I know he would laugh over my fear, thinking he still has power over me.
But he doesn’t.
I am standing there. With all the other women. Standing tall. Strong. Powerful.
You can’t hurt me anymore.
As we walk through the city center together, cheering, I feel a wave of relief. Finally, my voice can be heard. Finally, I can scream.
For so long, I kept my past a secret, the terror behind closed doors, the emotional blackmail, psychological abuse, the bruises, the rapes.
No more. Never again.
Even after the protest, one question keeps echoing in my mind:
Why don’t women in this country get the protection we deserve? In Spain, they reduced the number of murders to zero, not by locking women away in shelters, but by putting ankle monitors on the men. Why don’t we do that here?
The Netherlands doesn’t need to reinvent anything. Just copy the Spanish plan and implement it. At the end of the day only one thing counts:
Enough is enough.