Court jails woman for killing her rapist, Activists protest

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.

Roxana Ruiz, who strangled her rapist to death with a T-shirt in May 2021, was sentenced to prison for attempting to defend herself.

Ruiz was sentenced to prison in Mexico for “excessive use of self-defense” after strangling the man who stormed into her home and 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.

According to the National Citizen Observatory of Feminicide and the RNPED [National Registry of Data on Missing Persons], Nezahualcoyotl is the second municipality in the state of Mexico with the largest number of femicides and intentional homicides of women, and the third in disappearances.

Ruiz told El Pas Newspaper that she worried about her 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.

“Denying Roxana Ruiz’s right to freedom does not improve her life or the lives of hundreds of poor women who are imprisoned today; on the contrary, it perpetuates structural and cultural violence.”

Ruiz’s lawyer told reporters that the verdict, which also ordered her to pay 286,000 pesos (£13,000) in damages and compensation to the man’s family, would be appealed.

Last year, 3,755 women were murdered in Mexico, according to government figures.