Acid Attacks a Rising Menace for Colombian Women : NPR
Fighting For Harsher Penalties
What is clear is that most of the attacks are occurring in Bogota, a city of 8 million, and that the victims are generally from the working or lower classes. There is also a spike in attacks against men, with muggers using acid to stun a victim before robbing him.
The problem of attacks against women, though, has gotten so severe that Rubio, the councilwoman, and a senator from her party, Carlos Baena, are proposing legislation that would require acid sales to be registered. They also want to dramatically increase criminal penalties because acid attacks often lead to little or no jail time.
“The punishment is very light and doesn’t take into account the very dramatic pain that the victim has to go through,” says Baena.
Colombia’s attorney general, Eduardo Montealegre, tells NPR he is putting together a special team of prosecutors and evidence-collection experts to investigate the crimes and to determine whether authorities have failed to catalog acid attacks as attempted homicides in cases where the assaults could have caused a victim’s death.
His office, which is now investigating 36 attacks against women, believes that the number of cases reported to authorities does not accurately reflect the true number of assaults.
Montealegre says that’s because sometimes the attacker is a relative of the victim. And the victim then fears what might happen to her should she file a report.