A non-governmental organisation defending women’s rights in Mexico, Nos Queremos Vivas (We Want to Stay Alive) has condemned a court judgment that jailed a woman for six years and two months for killing her rapist.
The woman, Roxana Ruiz who strangled her rapist to death with a T-shirt in May 2021, was handed a prison sentence for trying to defend herself.
The State of Mexico court jailed Ruiz for “excessive use of self-defence” after she strangled the man who broke into her home, threatened and raped her.
According to Mirror, the court said while they admitted that she was a victim of rape, they believed “a blow on the head” would have been enough to defend the 23-year-old.
Two years ago, the mother of one was arrested by police after she was seen trying to drag a bag containing the chopped-up body parts of her attacker.
She ended up in a terrifying situation after she saw the man stranded on the street and offered him a place to stay.
The court heard how she woke up in the night and found the man in her bed raping her, and she hit him in the face and gave him a nosebleed.
While he was distracted she grabbed a T-shirt and used it to strangle him to death.
“I feel sad, disappointed in justice. If I had not defended myself, I would be dead,” Ruiz told the media outside the court in the municipality of Nezahualcóyotl — one of the most dangerous to be a woman in Mexico.
Nezahualcoyotl is the second municipality in the state of Mexico with the highest number of femicides, and intentional homicides of women and the third in disappearances, according to the National Citizen Observatory of Feminicide and RNPED [National Registry of Data on Missing Persons].
Ruiz told El País Newspaper that she lived in fear for herself and her five-year-old son’s future.
“I feel tight in my chest because I don’t want to go back to jail,” she said last year.
Nos Queremos Vivas (We Want to Stay Alive), a Mexican organisation that campaigns against male violence, condemned the verdict and has sparked a protest.
The NGO said, “No woman should be jailed for defending lives that the state does not protect.
“Roxana Ruiz’s life, as well as that of hundreds of poor women who are imprisoned today, will not improve by denying her the right to freedom; on the contrary, it perpetuates the existence of structural and cultural violence.”
Ruiz’s lawyer told reporters that the verdict would be appealed, which also ordered her to pay damages and compensation of 286,000 pesos (£13,000) to the man’s family.
According to government statistics, 3,755 women were murdered in Mexico last year