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Outrage in Colombia after a woman was punched by the national football team coach
By Anastasia Moloney
When Colombia’s national football team coach, Hernan Dario Gomez, was seen punching a woman outside a bar in the centre of Colombia’s capital Bogotá earlier this month, few predicted the public furor and debate the incident caused and continues to generate.
The 51-year-old Colombian coach, better known as Bolillo, resigned shortly after the incident. He issued a public statement apologising to women, saying that he was “destroyed” and “profoundly sorry” for losing control the way he did.
"It shames me in front of my mother, my wife and every woman in my family and in my country," Gomez said in his statement.
The Colombian football team’s main sponsor, brewer Bavaria, quickly welcomed his resignation.
"A sponsor like Bavaria doesn't want Bolillo as coach, not only because of the implications that could have for our reputation but also because of what it could do to the reputation of the country," head of Bavaria's corporate affairs, Fernando Jaramillo, told local radio.
In recent weeks radio talk shows and the local press across Latin America have debated whether it was right for Gomez to resign, what, if any, punishment he deserves and whether he should be forgiven.
It is a question that has divided Colombians. In a poll conducted by Colombian media outlets, some 48 percent of Colombians interviewed thought it was right that Gomez resigned over the incident, while about 43 percent believed the coach should have stayed on.
Gomez had also been working as a supervisor for world football’s governing body, FIFA, at the under-20 World Cup, which Colombia is currently hosting.
More importantly, though, the affair has put the problem of violence against women in the spotlight in a country where it receives little attention and where assaults against women are often condoned.
There is a prevailing attitude in much of Colombian society, even among many women, that violence against women somehow happens because it is a woman’s fault.
Such attitudes are reflected in the views expressed by Colombian conservative senator, Liliana Rendon, who defended the actions of the football coach.
“We (women) can be really annoying, we can be very bothersome and manipulating … she did something that provoked his reaction,” Rendon told local television.
Last year, 125 women were killed by their husbands or partners in Colombia. That’s one woman every three days.
According to a report by Colombia’s National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences, last year nearly 51,200 women in the country were victims of domestic violence, the majority of incidents carried out by current or former husbands and partners. In many cases, assaults on women are carried out by men under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.
Violence against women is thought to be far higher than official figures show, say local women’s groups, as women often feel too ashamed to come forward to report the crime. Some doubt they will receive help from the police, while others do not know where to get help.
For Isabel Ortiz, head of the Women and Future Foundation, a Colombian non-governmental organisation campaigning for women’s rights and equality, it’s clear that the former Colombian coach deserves to be punished.
“It would be a bad example for society to let this case go,” said Ortiz, in an interview with Colombian news magazine La Semana. “Since the message would be that aggressors can hit women and get away with it.”
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