Las Palmas De Gran Canaria (EFE).- The president of the Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence, attached to the General Council of the Judiciary, Ángeles Carmona, highlighted this Monday that 70% of the sentences handed down in Spain crimes of sexual violence affect minors.
Before speaking at a meeting of judges and doctors on health, childhood and rights, in which State experts comprehensively address the phenomenon of violence against children and adolescents, Carmona said that coordination between these services is essential so that victims of violence, especially minors, who are the most vulnerable, are perfectly protected.
This coordination has been going on for a long time, but especially since two years ago, when a court that is specifically dedicated to child violence was launched in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria as a pilot project, an experience that is intended to be extended to all the judicial districts of the country and that will be replicated shortly in Alicante, as announced.
Carmona has stressed that minors are especially vulnerable to all kinds of violence, but especially sexual violence and, for this reason, doctors need to collaborate with the Justice to be able to detect cases of child violence that have increased after the pandemic.
“We suspect that in the era of harsh confinement, when we were locked up in our homes, where 75% of sexual assaults on minors and any type of violence are committed, these cases have risen enormously”, without registering notable differences between autonomous communities, has referred.
The judicial secretary has also stressed that of the ten sentences handed down by the Supreme Court, in which it reduced sentences as a consequence of the only yes is yes law, “seven affected minor victims.”
Carmona has also requested the collaboration of the teaching staff to detect these cases, since in the classroom children can tell things that do not count in their family environment, where their sexual aggressors usually come from, mostly men: biological parents, partners of the mothers or uncles.
Since the Law for the Protection of Children and Adolescents was approved, “all citizens are obliged to report when they know that a minor is being the victim of any type of violence,” he has warned.
The president of the Observatory has confirmed that, according to the statistics of the Ministry of the Interior, the number of detected cases of minor victims is increasing, mostly reported from the health or educational field, for which she understands that “we are learning to better detect these cases to be able to get them out of that circle of violence, something that is essential because the child will never report an act like this that comes from their environment”.
The head of Pediatrics and pediatric emergencies at the Insular Maternal-Child University Hospital Complex, Svetlana Pavlovic, has confirmed that these services have detected that in recent years, as a result of the pandemic, cases of violence against minors have increased, understood these as physical and psychological abuse and sexual assault.
An increase that has been 10% in 2020 and 25% in 2022 and that has been detected under the protocol that is activated upon suspicion from the field of Primary Care.
The director of the Canary Islands Health Service, Elizabeth Hernández, has announced the upcoming start-up, in the Maternal and Child, of a “pioneering” project in which all the details will be taken care of and that “could be a national and European reference ”.
Hand in hand with the Court for Violence against Children and Adolescents, “we are going to look for that circuit that, as soon as a suspected child arrives, provides an adequate space, trained professionals, a protocol agreed between pediatricians, nurses, social workers, 112 and State Security Forces and Bodies so that at all times we all know how we have to act, what we have to tell them and how we can protect them”, he announced.
This is a pilot project that will be launched before the end of the year and that will have, when possible in the Maternity and Childhood, “a small infrastructure that will be very modern and adapted to new technologies,” explained Hernández. EFE