A group of far more than 500 women and adult men came with each other Saturday night time in Syntagma Square in Athens, contacting for the term, femicide, known in Greek as “gynoktonia,” to be acknowledged by the state as a unique criminal offense.

They also held a vigil for Caroline Crouch, the most up-to-date Greek sufferer of “death by domesticity.”

Gals and guys clad in black, some acquiring smeared their hands and necks in pink, appeared on the methods in front of Parliament to mourn the murder of Crouch. Holding symptoms and lighting candles, the Hellenic Community for Feminists said on their Fb web page that the murder verified all over again that males dedicate femicide to command and possess women of all ages.

Violence towards females can comprise a vast variety of acts, from verbal harassment and other sorts of emotional abuse to every day bodily or sexual abuse. At the significantly stop of the spectrum is femicide: the murder of a female.

Connect with It By its Name: Femicide

The massive banner the team held said “Call it by its identify: Femicide.” Other posters shown at the vigil stated: “Not my husband’s — not my father’s — I want to belong to me,” “In the street and at dwelling protected — not brave,” “We control our bodies,” “No suggests no,  and “The patriarchy kills.”

“We have to take to the streets and we have to demand justice and a alter in the law to understand femicide,” Maria Gasouka tells Greek Reporter.

The professor emeritus at the University of the Aegean has lectured and investigated for many years on concerns of gender and equality by way of the section of cultural engineering and conversation. She added “Tuesday, we will be at the Athens courthouse to mail a concept to the community and legislators that ample is plenty of.”

Gasouka claimed that women’s solidarity movements are in mourning now, but they are determined to place an close to femicide. “Women’s teams across Greece want to include the word femicide in legal law and general public debate, because the phrase femicide rallies persons to struggle for social and cultural improve and rejects gender-based inequality and violence.”

According to Gasouka, who is also a spokesperson for the Hellenic Feminists Network, the legal process in the country perpetuates femicide. The legal method does not accept the misogyny guiding crimes. It does not figure out femicide, or gynoktonia, as a individual criminal offense.

“There have been so quite a few incidences of femicide in Greece. Worldwide the count was at 80,000 at the stop of 2019,” Masouka relates. “Where is the point out now? The Secretariat for Gender Equality has been silent as this monster has been uncloaked. Why is a crime that impacts fifty percent the nation’s populace currently being overlooked?”

Demonstrating Against Femicide at Athens Courthouse Tuesday

The team Hellenic Feminists Network has asked the customers of their Facebook team to join them on Tuesday morning at the Athens Courthouse, also referred to as the Evlepidon.  The group is rallying their induce all over the slogan “Solidarity with Caroline” at the courthouse.

Babis Anagnostopoulos, the spouse of Crouch, who confessed to her murder to Athens law enforcement on Thursday evening, will file a plea pursuing his arraignment previous Friday.

Caroline Crouch, a 20 year-old, British-born resident of Greece, was allegedly suffocated to dying, by Anagnostopoulos, her 32-12 months-aged partner, on Could 11. Crouch and Anagnostopoulos’ infant daughter, 11 month old Lydia, was with the pair at the time of the murder.

To begin with Anagnostopoulos, a helicopter pilot, led the law enforcement on a wild goose chase, with a fabricated tale of a gang of armed, overseas guys breaking into the couple’s household in the Athens suburb of Glyka Nera to supposedly rob them of money and jewellery.

Anagnostopoulos advised police that they experienced tied up the pair independently and ultimately strangled Crouch, with the child existing at her side.

Immediately after 40 times, forensic evidence retrieved from good phones and good watches owned by the target and her husband informed a further story which was wildly inconsistent with the pilot’s account.

Anagnostopoulos was contacted by law enforcement on the day of Crouch’s 40-day memorial services, held on their residence island of Alonissos in the Aegean, and flown again to Athens. Confronted by law enforcement with digital proof and inconsistencies in the pilot’s initial deposition, Anagnostopoulos later confessed that day soon after several hours of questioning.

The pilot allegedly mentioned, “She said she preferred us to different. That is why I killed her.”

Studies have emerged that Anagnostopoulos reported he was conquer by the worry of shedding his wife and his daughter on that evening, next back again and forth arguments and text messages involving himself and Crouch. He reportedly put a pillow in excess of Crouch’s confront and only just after her physique was lifeless did he know what he experienced performed.

The Attika Police Directorate subsequently produced facts about the contents of Crouch’s individual diaries, revealing a pretty troubled connection with her husband considering that miscarrying their initial little one.

It appeared that Crouch experienced experienced from post-natal melancholy. Also introduced was the report of sensible cell phone and good view digital evidence during the time when the victim and Anagnostopoulos had been supposedly immobilized by the alleged bandits.

Anagnostopoulos experienced created a torturous tale, apparently fabricated so that he would not drop his daughter. He staged the crime scene and even strangled the spouse and children pet dog, by hanging the pet by its leash, from the staircase, to make the story credible and take away any suspicion from him.

The pilot, handcuffed and putting on a bulletproof jacket, was arraigned Friday early morning at the Athens Courthouse, on a person rely of involuntary manslaughter and one rely of intentionally killing an animal. Anagnostopoulos will give further evidence and enter a plea at the Athens Courthouse Tuesday early morning.

“Monster” Who Perpetrated Femicide

“Anagnostopoulos extremely character drew suspicion away from the criminal offense,” Masouka stated. “A younger, appealing Greek, economically relaxed in a respectable profession — what mom wouldn’t want these kinds of a son-in-regulation? And however he was a monster,” Masouka claimed.

“He will gain community sympathy because of his boy-following-door overall look — and that is why we really should be relentless. His instruction as pilot, to continue being tranquil and consider speedy in a everyday living or dying situation, to go through the least quantity of collateral destruction, that was his worry — his individual everyday living-how he would survive,” Masouka tells Greek Reporter.

She provides “I am shocked as I have just viewed on the information reviews that this pair made use of an application on their phones to be able to see each individual other at all occasions. What form of a great marriage is that?”

The professor enumerated quite a few cases of violence against females that have led to their death in the latest yrs in Greece.

Masouka claimed she nonetheless aches for her former university student, Eleni Topaloudi, who was raped and murdered on the Greek island of Rhodes in 2018. “How quite a few extra of our daughters, our sisters, our moms do we have to see violently killed for the reason that they had been females that refused to post to the will of men?”

Masouka advised Greek Reporter “Women and men will be there to proceed to draw focus to deaths from domesticity — dying at the fingers of a perpetrator who retains the keys to a woman’s property and generally, her coronary heart.”

Females in Greece who are experiencing violence in their household can connect with the hotline for Violence Towards Ladies at 15900.