The most serious case of isolating violence

«He made us clean his house and cook,» according to some press reports. Exercising their individual freedom, there were people, most of them seniors, who sometimes, in order not to be alone correcting work or making articles, asked others to go to their apartment and work together, on the same task or more frequently, each one on their own. When Ramon was young he had been in residence at universities such as Stanford, where he had often been at professors’ houses to parties, to work or to spend weekends. He and a friend had bought a flat so that a mutual friend from their youth could spend his last years there, but the isolating violence he suffered for supporting the victims precipitated his end.

At the end of the morning, those who continued in the afternoon (until a maximum of 8 p.m.) cooked (something that could be made ready in a short time), ate and someone offered to make coffee, while someone else put the dishes in the dishwasher and Ramon usually cleaned the ceramic hob. He always insisted that there was no need to clean or do anything else because the cleaning had been hired. It is said that the serious accusations that they spread anonymously in the media must be believed, but there are many documented direct messages demonstrating that their statements (including voice-messages) are not true.

Isolating violence, included in legislation passed in parliaments with names such as second-order violence, is practiced by aggressors against those who support their victims so that no one else dares to do so and thus they are isolated. Although there is a universal consensus that gender-based violence cannot be overcome if victims do not have support that begins in their immediate environment, in practice the reality is that most of the time they do not find the support they need.

Supporting the victims has meant that Ramon has received an isolating violence based on inventing and distorting everything to turn what is usual in many environments into extremely serious accusations. Anonymous voices that accuse of having been taken to the flat under duress to carry out household chores such as cleaning and cooking. However, there are several testimonies that contradict these statements, as well as numerous written messages refuting them.

However, isolating violence always has one sole objective: to invent anything that can destroy the image, health and sometimes the life of those who have dared to support their victims so that no one else dares to support them. The isolating violence ended in 2006 with Ramon’s friend and now there are those who want to end him.

Despite the approval of parliaments and organizations, society has not yet mobilized to end the isolating violence. This situation has caused the aggressors of the many and diverse victims that we have supported over decades to join the attacks. Ramon was the professor who in 1995 supported the university student who filed the first complaint in Spanish universities. Ramon and CREA supported Cristina years later, who was abused when she was a minor by the person who later invented the content that appears in the three campaigns (2004, 2016 and 2025) and is being published today. In 2003 CREA developed the project that was later approved as the first R+D on GBV in universities, of which I was the PI and which led the Spanish parliament to force universities to recognize the problem and to take measures.Ramon was the one who reported the JdM case. And he supported many more and diverse victims until during 2024 when we supported victims who were interns who reported inappropriate behavior by senior professors.

Ramon Flecha is well known worldwide for having been one of the persons who has taken the most risks supporting victims of violence since he was a teenager. There is extensive scientific research published on this that can be easily found. The aggressiveness of the accusations together with the anonymity does not seek to do justice but to tip public opinion against people who have formally reported harassment in university.

I have searched scientific databases, documents and social networks; I have not found a larger and more serious case of isolating violence than this one. Although there is a universal consensus that gender violence cannot be overcome if victims do not have support that begins in their closest environment, the reality is that most of the time they do not find it. There is also consensus that this support, so proclaimed in all speeches, is so scarce in practice because of the cruel violence received by those who dare to support. Far from breaking the silence, one of the main effects of this smear campaign is the increase in social fear of protecting both the victims and those who support them. I have heard many times these days: “do not support so much or the same thing that happened to Ramon will end up happening to you.”