The case of the alleged assault of an 11-year-old girl in a bathroom in a shopping center by a group of six boys, all under the age of 16, took place in Badalona, a municipality in the region of Barcelona (Catalonia). last October, but only a few days ago it became public knowledge, with the internment of one of the alleged elderly aggressors, who already has a criminal record for the same crime, in a center for minors, by decision of a judge.
Another boy was placed under “supervised liberty” and the remaining three identified, as they were under 14 years old, cannot be subject to judicial sanctions, so these cases were transferred to the public authority for the protection of minors (Direção-Geral the childhood).
In relation to this case, the police in Catalonia and later the Spanish media released data on sexual violence committed by minors and in particular those under the age of 14, to show and warn that this is not a one-off situation.
Reports of sexual assault committed by minors increased by 58% in Spain in 2021 compared to 2020, from 1,661 to 2,625, according to the latest official statistics.
In 2021, 439 minors were convicted of 609 sex offenses in Spain (12.6% more than in 2020), with almost 300 of these crimes of a sexual nature committed by victims under the age of 16.
In Catalonia alone, 3,064 girls and women were victims of sexual violence in 2022, of which 38.2% were minors (23% were between 13 and 17 years old and 15% were under 12 years old), according to police data of the region.
As for the aggressors, of the 2,205 identified last year in Catalonia, 12.7% were minors, of which 11% were between the ages of 13 and 17 and 2% were under the age of 12.
“These are numbers that are troubling, alarming, disturbing and preoccupying us and demand that we all understand and analyze what is happening to us as a society,” Catalan police spokeswoman Montserrat Escudé said at a news conference.
“As a society we have a problem and we urgently need an approach to the affective and sexual education of these minors. An approach solely on safety is a failure. Comments have a strategy and understand that this can no longer be tolerated ,” he added.
In turn, the Spanish public prosecutor who coordinates cases involving minors, Eduardo Esteban, warned that since 2015 there has been a “surprising” increase in crimes against life and sexual freedom committed by minors.
Speaking to EFE news agency, Eduardo Esteban said that more and more children and adolescents are turning to Internet pornography “as if it were a tutorial”, in a trivialization of sexual relationships that could explain the rise in sexual assaults by minors. .
To this “serious mistake” is added the “absolute refraining from sex education”, according to the prosecutor, for whom “there really is no sex education for minors, who resort to alternative, undesirable ways, such as pornography”. .
According to the public prosecutor, another characteristic of these cases is the registration of the aggressions.
“To the point of questioning whether this is the satisfaction they’re looking for,” that is, to publicize what they’ve done, he said.
In the now well-known case of Badalona, it was precisely a video recorded by the alleged aggressors that led to the complaint to the authorities.
But before that, the video was seen by dozens of students at a school where one of the boys involved attended, with none of them filing a complaint.
A brother of the victim who attends the same school heard the video circulating and confronted his sister at home, eventually leading to the family reporting the incident to the police.
According to a study on Spain by the non-governmental organization (NGO) Save The Children entitled “Sexual (Dis)information”, published in 2020, pornography is the only source of information about sexuality for 30% of minors, videos in which ” harmful gender roles are reproduced” and where violence usually plays the leading role.
Source: DN
