Maria Perez |
Málaga (EFE).- The psychologist Javier Urra, the first Ombudsman for Minors in Spain, warns of the growth that filial violence has experienced in recent years, that of children towards parents, which explains “a loss of respect for authority and age” and because many parents, he assures, “allow themselves to be blackmailed”.
“Parents often want to buy their children’s affection and this is a problem,” Urra said in an interview with EFE on the occasion of his participation in a conference on addictions and young people organized by the MonteAlminara clinic and the Andalusian Youth Institute. .
Urra, Professor of Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM), also warns that there are more and more cases of “brutal” school bullying, where cyberbullying “plays an increasing role”, and sees “insufficient” the current measures to combat the problem.
“There is a feeling of lack of protection in the victims with respect to their aggressors,” says Urra, who criticizes that it is often the harassed themselves who have to leave a school and considers the intervention of educational centers and their professionals “essential” to avoid the “suffering” of the victim.
Increase in group aggressions
Many of these cases of harassment, stresses the expert, occur in groups, as also happens in the case of sexual assaults perpetrated by minors.
Urra explains that the main reason for the notable increase in these attacks is “the feeling of power and belonging to a group”, together with the lack of “individual responsibility”.
“Until now there had been no group rapes committed by minors,” recalls Urra, who relates this fact to the consumption, at an early age, of “violent pornography” and to a “upsurge in machismo.”
He asserts that young people do not seek “only sexual pleasure”, but to demonstrate to themselves and others that “they do what they want”.
The paper of the parents
According to the psychologist, a determining factor in the behavioral development of the minor is the attitude of the parents, whom he blames for not educating their children “in moral and ethical values.”
Parents, he stresses, exempt minors from “responsibility for their actions” and act as their “lawyers”, too often defending violent actions.
Urra, who is a psychologist on voluntary leave of absence from the Prosecutor’s Office of the Superior Court of Justice and the Juvenile Courts of Madrid, believes that criminal sanctions can be a vital measure to “prevent the recidivism” of minors.
“Being penalized is a right,” declares Urra, who is convinced that punishment is an effective way to re-educate minors by setting limits, to then work on a cognitive level on how they perceive their actions.
More support for victims
Urra maintains that the imposition of sentences would work as a “vaccine” so that other young people do not repeat the same acts and would avoid the feeling of “impunity” towards the aggressor that the victim sometimes has.
“The pain continues over time,” says the specialist, author of more than 70 books on the behavior of minors, who stresses the need for those who have been attacked to receive the appropriate treatment so that they can “regain trust in the human being.”
“Eradicating” the patterns of group action is “essential” to put an end to violence committed by minors, about which “there is a lot of talk”, but “nothing is done”, laments Urra, who believes that the measures that are being currently being carried out are not “effective”.
For the therapist, it is essential to make children aware so that, from an early age, they “never take a position on the side of the bullies” and develop “own judgement” that allows them to identify acts as their own even if they are carried out in a group.