A milestone in fighting violence against women

How a rapid movement persuaded the police to cooperate with women’s rights specialists

By Fanny Mommertz, fundraiser, PATENT Association

Content advisory: please note this article contains potentially distressing information.

We all know that major social achievements often come in response to great tragedies. Unfortunately, this story is no exception. I work at PATENT Association, an organization fighting for women’s rights and safety in Hungary.

The name PATENT is coined from the Hungarian phrase Patriarchátust Ellenzők Társasága, which means Society Against Patriarchy. PATENT’s members are women’s rights defenders and experts on gender-based violence and reproductive rights. We take action against gender-based violence in the field of law-making and law enforcement, and, in service of this, we are building a social movement.

It was the end of my second week working at PATENT as a fundraiser. I had just made familiarity with my new colleagues and with our digital systems, starting to get used to my day-to-day work of composing newsletters and digital campaigns.

29 January

Suddenly, around the very end of January, our inner communication channels were overflooded with news of a Japanese woman who had been found dead in her home after a fire. I soon realized that she had been a client of our organization, seeking legal advice for negotiations with her ex-husband. She had been trying to return to Japan with her two kids, but the ex-husband had prevented her from doing so by initiating a Hague process against her. By filing such a process, a parent or guardian can prevent the other parent from moving to another country with their common child. This process was originally meant to protect the best interests of children, but in reality, most cases are filed by men with the intention to control and abuse their (ex)-partners.

That was not all, of course. Besides committing physical violence, the man had also previously sent several messages to her, threatening her life. ‘M’ (pseudonym), the victim had tried seeking help from the police who had dismissed all five accusations she had tried to initiate against him.

Meaning she had received no protection to prevent her murder from those meant to protect her.

31 January

Despite knowing her situation, the police initially stated that her death had been an accident. The police stated that the fire had been caused by her smoking, burning her to death. The only problem was - besides the death threats she had received of course - she had never smoked.

1 February

In response to this worrying progress, the victim’s friends and my colleague Júlia Spronz, who had been the victim’s legal representative, turned to the public. In addition PATENT’s statement on social media regarding the circumstances preceding M.’s death, gained serious attention. Journalists started to reach out to M’s lawyer, Júlia and M’s friends, allowing them to tell the public that the police were grossly overlooking the series of abuse and threats the victim had suffered.

In response, the police published a post on their official Facebook-page regarding the case, stating in a cynical tone that their professional investigation revealed not a single sign of murder at that time. M’s friends posted several comments expressing their concern, and the admin of the page continued replying to them in a heavily cynical and lecturing manner. It was awful to read, but by the police responding, it gave additional fuel to the public outrage that had been stirring up against the police’s behavior.

The team at PATENT & M’s community were truly afraid that the police were going to just close the case like that, and let another murderer and abuser of a woman slip away without any consequence. It has been usual practice for the Hungarian police not to put much effort into cases of violence against women. Most of the time, as the countless heartbreaking stories of our clients and community show, women asking for help receive humiliating treatment instead of protection.

4 February

Just one week later and despite their previous communication, the police announced a major turn in the investigation. After having had a closer look at the ex-husband’s cover story and some surveillance footage, it became clear that the fire had been no accident, but a cover for murder.

Following this announcement, they made absolutely no effort to apologize for meaning to close the case as an accident, nor their communication on their social platform. Not to mention that they refrained from acknowledging the role of the publicity PATENT and M.’s friends had achieved in making them revise the case. They cynically said that the reason they had suddenly suspected the murder lay in their police instincts and routine.

Besides the relief we felt for M’s murderer being finally charged, we were absolutely furious. We were not going to stop there, allowing another woman to be murdered after asking for protection multiple times. At this point, the wide public felt the same way, ready to take action.

PATENT joined forces with M.’s friends to rapidly organize a protest for the weekend - just in four days. We set up a donation page for all the costs, and informed our supporters via social media, and, of course our newsletter which I had recently been in charge of. We offered multiple ways for our followers to support us or contribute to the demonstration. There were the obvious chances for donating and joining the protest in person, but we asked for another action as well: for them to share their personal stories.

It was obvious for anyone with a little insight into the situation of women in Hungary, that M’s case was not an unusual story. Her case had become the representation of the chauvinist routine of police work, causing the vast majority of abused women to leave police stations dismissed and held accountable for their abuse.

7 February

To illustrate this at the event of the protest, we asked our followers to share their experiences with the police. I sent out an email to each of our 19,000 activists, informing them about our upcoming protests, and asking them to contribute by replying with their stories via email. We guaranteed we would only share the chosen stories in spoken word on our protest, and, of course, not expose any personal details or information of the sender.

Dozens of messages flooded our inbox, each containing awful and heartbreaking stories. Each sent by a terrified and hopeless woman, forced to maintain contact with her (and in most cases, her child’s) abuser by the law enforcement and the social services.

The email address to which the stories were sent is accessible for only a few members of PATENT, so the personal information of the senders was protected. The members with access, including myself, carefully read through all stories and chose four to be told at the protest. They were shortened and rewritten until there remained absolutely no content that could imply the identities of their senders.

We had yet to come up with a campaign to demonstrate the public outrage in the aftermath of the protest as well. A petition looked to be an ideal form to support this, and the topic of the demand was quite evident: Mandatory training for every police member in violence against women!

8 February

Finally, the day of the protest came. There were speeches and vigils in three locations: the street where M and her children used to live, the local police station, and, the parliament. There we read a few of the stories out loud that victims had previously sent us, and, for the closing of the demonstration, I went onto the stage to present our call to action. . It ended with the announcement of the petition, asking the audience for signatures. They were handed leaflets with a QR-code that navigated to its landing page, letting them sign immediately.

11 February

The number of the signatures grew rapidly. Reaching 5,000, half of our goal, required almost no effort on our side. We kept our followers engaged with content during this time, directing them to the petition & asking them to share. Meanwhile we were also starting to plan our next action for the deadline of the petition, March 8, Women’s Day.

But our planning process suddenly got interrupted with something quite unexpected. The police superintendents, both national and regional, contacted us. Apparently, they were persuaded (and even moved) by our campaign alongside M’s friends, and were open to making real changes to enable this justice.

At first this news made us more skeptical than hopeful. However the superintendents made sure to prove their commitment by apologizing publicly, dismissing high-ranking officers from their positions, promising to change their ways in handling ongoing cases and to extend their trainings in violence against women, consulting expert organizations like PATENT.

14 February

They invited PATENT and our sister-organization NANE for an official consultation. Meanwhile, our clients involved in ongoing cases were contacted by police officers asking if they were safe and whether they had any urgent needs. I don’t think I need to say it, but something like this had been totally unimaginable even a few weeks before.

This is a remarkable turn of events within the recent history of the women's movement in Hungary. Our long-reigning conservative and nationalistic government has been eager to create an environment in which women are secondary citizens, reduced to their child-bearing capacity. Because of this, during the last decade, no tragedies, no demands, no movements and no organizations could achieve any real improvements in matters concerning women. Until now.

To precisely explain why it was this particular event that made a real difference would be difficult. One reason could be that M’s social circle was particularly wide, especially compared to other victims, with its members being well-informed about violence against women, and with network access to media workers in Hungary and abroad as well. Meaning, they knew the means of creating public pressure. But the coordinated digital campaign was essential to create public pressure so this case - and cases of thousands of other women - are not shoved under the rug, again. We, at PATENT, take digital organization seriously because we understand the potential social impact it can have: and this campaign had a bigger impact we could have imagined in the first place. But PATENT alone was not enough: we have an online community of thousands of people, committed to protect and fight for women's rights and they are ready to act. To top that, the police were an easy target with their abominable public communication and unprofessional investigation in the beginning.

So, all these factors together resulted in the culmination of brewing anger of victims, their communities and all those impacted by domestic violence being ignored for the last decade.

Together we made such a strong public impact that could not go unnoticed or discarded anymore.

So this is indeed a time for celebrating this long awaited and fought for social change, but not at all a time to lean back. A significant step this is, but it does not bring an instant systemic change. Police practices may improve, but there is still much work to do in all aspects of society. For instance, social services for women are underfunded or not funded at all, and courts routinely dismiss cases of violence against women. Arguably, the most critical changes needed are cultural. Hungarian society must shift to respond to abused women with understanding and support.

I really hope this is just the beginning, and if it is, it’s a promising one. We, the members of PATENT, are now continuing to collect signatures for our petition, until the police ensure mandatory training for all its members. If they do, we will express further demands, goals and ideas to keep up the publicity of our fight.

One thing is for certain: This is the best job I have ever done.

Fanny Mommertz is currently working as the fundraiser of PATENT Association. She landed her place in the Hungarian women’s rights organization after studying liberal arts and social theory, and gaining eventful experience in evil corporations as well as a cooperative-owned bar. Feminism has been the long-time focus of both her personal and theoretical interests.

A milestone in fighting violence against women in Hungary