Doña Blanca: not even grandmothers are safe

More than seven weeks have passed since Doña Blanca Pardo died, and there has still not been a single arrest for her femicide. She was 72. If this can happen to a grandmother from the countryside, no one in this country is safe. And we men must stop looking the other way.

Blanca Emeria Pardo Rosero was a farmer and mother of six. She lived in the rural community of Plazuelas, in San Bernardo, Nariño. On August 29, she went out to collect firewood. Her relatives found her in a field, naked, beaten and suffering from hypothermia. She died the following day at San Pedro Hospital in Pasto.

Her family says doctors saw signs of sexual abuse and that she managed to say there were two attackers. The Institute of Legal Medicine has yet to release its final report. Prosecutors are investigating, analyzing cellphone tower data and interviewing neighbors, but have not identified anyone. The report is still missing, yes. But a 72-year-old woman, naked, beaten and abandoned in a field: I call that femicide.

This is not an isolated case. According to the Institute of Legal Medicine, between January and July 2026, 92 examinations for suspected sexual violence were conducted on people over 60. During the same period in 2025, there were 70. That is a 31% increase. In 81 of the 92 cases, the victim was a woman.

The National Institute of Health, meanwhile, reported 236 cases of sexual violence against older people between January and August. These are different systems, but they tell the same story: what is examined or reported is only what becomes visible. Many victims remain silent out of shame, fear or dependence on the person abusing them.

We have made grandmothers invisible. We imagine them safe in the kitchen, with a cup of coffee, far from danger. But an attacker does not look at age: he looks for an opportunity. A woman alone, an isolated path, someone who may be unable to defend herself or fears she will not be believed.

There are names behind the figures. On October 5, in San Vicente de Chucurí, Santander, a 70-year-old woman with impaired vision was walking at 5:20 in the morning. According to the authorities, she was taken to a field and raped. A 28-year-old man is in prison for rape.

In Apartadó, Antioquia, a video shows three healthcare trainees touching and mocking a grandmother over 90 who has Alzheimer's, inside a nursing home. She asks them to respect her. Two of the young people are reportedly minors. This is a home where she should have been protected.

And in La Ceja, Antioquia, on August 16, María Eugenia Cardona Osorio, 70, was killed with a hammer in her apartment. The alleged perpetrator was her 78-year-old husband, who later died. The case is being investigated as femicide. Here, the danger was not in a field: it slept in the same house. The Institute of Legal Medicine also recorded 68 women over 60 killed between January and July, 14 more than in 2025. Not all are femicides, but the increase is almost 26%.

According to the Office of the Inspector General, citing Institute of Legal Medicine data, almost nine out of ten victims of sexual violence in Colombia are women. And those accused in these cases are, as far as is known, men. What do we do? We criticize women who speak up. We mock feminists. We loudly champion false allegations, which exist but represent a tiny fraction: an Argentine survey of more than eight million cases found them in fewer than 0.1%.

It is time to stop being spectators. To demand results from prosecutors in Doña Blanca's case. To stop applauding jokes against women. To look after all the women around us: the grandmother, the aunt, the neighbor in the village. And when we see something, to report it through line 155, which assists women who are victims of violence.

Brothers, we must raise our voices now and also be outraged by what already outrages women. Doña Blanca only went out to collect firewood. If even grandmothers are not safe, no one is safe. And as long as we men do not stand up, children will not be safe either.

Addendum: The law already provides an answer. Law 1761 of 2015, known as the Rosa Elvira Cely Law, increases the penalty for femicide when the victim is a woman over 60: the sentence rises to between 500 and 600 months in prison, or 41 to 50 years. Doña Blanca was 72. If femicide is established, what is missing is not a law, but justice that truly reaches families and fulfills its promise.