Paula Boira |
Madrid (EFE) 58% between 2020 and 2021, according to the latest available data.
In 2021, 2,625 proceedings were initiated for crimes against sexual freedom with minors involved, compared to 1,661 in 2020, according to the Annual Report of the Prosecutor’s Office.
In addition, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) recorded 439 minors convicted of sexual offenses in 2021 (12.6% more than the previous year), who committed 609 crimes of a sexual nature, almost 300 with a minor under 16 years of age as victim of assault.
Among the most notorious group rapes with minors involved in the last year, those of Burjassot (Valencia), Pulpí (Almería) and Vila-real (Castellón) stand out, three attacks that are part of the 211 recorded by Feminicidio.net since 2016, the year in in which the media case of La Manada took place.
The director of childhood policies for Save the Children, Catalina Perazzo, highlighted in statements to EFE that the main problem is the “lack of sexual-affective education” and prevention, but also the consumption of pornography at an increasingly younger age.
The courtroom coordinator for Minors agrees with her, Eduardo Esteban, who warns that since 2015 there has been a “surprising” increase in crimes against life and in the field of sexual freedom carried out by minors.
Alert for the consumption of pornography
The Save the Children study “Sexual (mis)information” shows that for 30% of minors, porn is their “only source of information about sexuality”, something worrying if one takes into account that adolescence “is the stage in which the one that forms not only the personality, but also the desire” and the sexual desires, in the words of Perazzo.
In this sense, Esteban warns that more and more children and adolescents are turning to pornography “as if it were a tutorial”, a trivialization of sexual relations that in his opinion may be behind the increase in crimes against sexual freedom .
In these videos, “harmful gender roles are reproduced” in which violence is usually the protagonist, and that adolescents imitate in their sexual relations “not always with the consent of the couple,” warns Perazzo.
Increased social awareness
Another reason why reports of sexual assaults are increasing is the greater social awareness of women regarding their sexual freedom and the breaking of the taboo around these crimes.
“There is always the paradox that we want the number of attacks to be reduced, but also to increase in a certain way, because that means that they are better verbalized and detected,” Parazzo points out.
According to the latest data from the Ministry of the Interior, between January and September of last year, 14,674 crimes against sexual freedom were registered, 16.3% more than the previous year. Of these, 1,954 were violations, a figure 21.5% higher than that registered in 2021.
However, the professor of criminology at the Comillas Pontifical University and general secretary of the Foundation for Applied Research in Crime and Security (Fiadys), Meritxell Pérez, warns that these attacks “are not something new.” “What happens is that now we find out,” she emphasizes.
“Now we are more aware thanks to the advances of feminism, which makes us capable of organizing ourselves as a society to respond and be forceful in the face of these behaviors, which before were dwarfed or tried to cover up,” she adds.
The profile of the aggressors
The profile of these aggressors, according to Pérez, are groups of young people “in search of sensations, who act in a context of leisure and consumption”, with no history of other sexual crimes and who “do not anticipate the consequences”.
“They see it as one more part of the activities within their group to go out and have a good time,” says the expert, who believes that the youngest aggressors “have the false feeling that their actions are not going to bring consequences” and “they don’t they are able to empathize with the victim, who is a mere instrument to the end: having a good time with their colleagues”.
Pérez also highlights that adolescence is a stage in which “many rules are broken” and there is a lot of “antisocial behavior.” “They test the limits, they need to differentiate themselves from adults and it is a way of claiming their adulthood”, highlights the expert, who assures that in many cases the aggressors “do not understand the damage they cause” and do not end up having a criminal career.
Another characteristic that is repeated, points out the prosecutor Eduardo Esteban, is the recording of these attacks and other crimes committed by minors. “To the point that we wonder if the satisfaction they seek is that”, that of publicizing their actions.