Pilar Mazo
Logroño, (EFE).- Group sexual aggressors have an average age between 19 and 25 years and, in general, tend to be younger and more violent than those who act alone; in addition to having a relationship with the consumption of alcohol and chemical substances prior to committing this crime.
This is one of the initial conclusions of the study currently being carried out by the Psychology and Criminology group of the International University of La Rioja (UNIR), the content of which was reported to EFE this Thursday by one of its main researchers, Agustina Vinagre.
This research group is focused on the study and analysis of the profiles of group sexual offenders and victims, as well as the consequences that these criminal actions have on them, explained Vinagre, who is also the coordinator of the Master’s Degree in Victimology and Criminology. of JOIN.
He has refused to rule on the group sexual assault on two girls aged 12 and 13 in Logroño on the 9th, for which seven minors have been identified, five of them arrested, since it is an open investigation.
The study of this group is based on a systematic review of the national and international scientific publications of the last five years on group sexual assaults, he specified.
The results found to date suggest that the age of group sexual aggressors is getting younger and it has been considered “really worrying” that, in an “exceptional” way, there are some who are less than 19 years old and even 12 or 13 .
He has defended that, for example, it is “rare” to find a sexual assault in a group of men over 40 years of age.
In the case of individual sexual offenders, he has said that the age range is wider because there are from young people to others who are over 50 years of age.
Another aspect that has stood out from this study is the “strong” influence exerted on these aggressors by group pressure, since, individually, they would not commit this type of crime and, when they do so in a group, sexual assault, it is even more violent.
Few data on the age of the victims
Regarding the profile of the victim of this type of aggression, he added, the results obtained in the tracking of the analyzed scientific publications reflect that there are no conclusive data because it gives the impression that the age of the victim has been studied less.
The existing scientific references regarding these victims allude to the consequences that sexual assault has on them at an emotional and health level, but not in terms of their profile, which “does not exist, which is very striking to us”, has had an impact this researcher.
He has recognized that “group sexual assaults are a complicated issue and, perhaps, the fundamental problem of this phenomenon is the increase in cases that we are observing” and that those involved are increasingly younger.
The study also shows the absence of results regarding the consumption of alcohol or other substances, such as drugs, in the victims of this type of act, except in the case of sexual assaults by chemical submission.
The members of this research group have found that, in general, victims of sexual assault are more reticent to file complaints, which explains why there is less data in this regard.
However, he believes that there has been a turning point when the case of the Pack occurred, the name by which the events related to a group sexual assault during the 2016 San Fermín festivities in Pamplona are known.
Easy access to pornography
From then on, he specified, “more work is being done on the investigation of the characteristics of group sexual assaults, above all, to try to find out if there are differential aspects” with individual ones, but, so far, the conclusive results concern more at the age of the aggressors since this type of event usually occurs in leisure environments.
The easy access of minors and adolescents to little-screened sexual content on the Internet is another of the conclusions of this investigation, in which it has been detected that they visit pages with pornographic content that require passing age filters, although it is appreciated that they do not exist. as such.
This access of minors, increasingly at younger ages, to this type of pornographic content causes them to “confuse what a healthy and consensual (sexual) relationship is” with one that is not, he concluded. EFE.