Six years ago, the Valencian Youth Institute (IVAJ) organized, on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, the photography and video contest "Don't touch WhatsApp". Aimed at young people between 14 and 30 years old, its main objective was to raise awareness about the importance of knowing, and therefore knowing how to detect, gender violence.
And the Department of Social Services, Equality and Housing uses this direct campaign again today in its awareness strategy, also with the help of IVAJ, because according to the second vice president and councilor of the branch, Susana Camarero, "minors are the future, but they are also our present. This morning Camarero inaugurates the 2023 exhibition generated from the works presented by young people between 14 and 30 years old to the competitions that the Institute has called on this topic in recent years.
Yesterday Camarero was concerned - "it's scary when we hear the data," she said - about the increase in cases of assaulted minors and spoke of "regress" in equality during the presentation of the longitudinal study Evolution of Violence against Women in the Childhood and Adolescence in Spain (2018-2022), prepared by the Foundation to Help Children and Adolescents at Risk (ANAR).
And the report reveals that gender violence is advancing in our Valencian society faster than assumed and reaches, unimaginable in the past, at "very early and especially vulnerable" ages, as defined by clinical psychologist Diana Díaz, director of ANAR's help lines for minors.
The report draws a very clear portrait of the minors who turn to the ANAR Foundation to ask for help. Some directly, other people through 016; They call to tell their tragedies - "he punches me every day"; "My mother's boyfriend abuses me," they said yesterday - or finally the mother, who already suffers gender violence, but does not dare to ask for help first, raises her voice: "Many do not report them, but they do for their children," said Díaz.
This devastating portrait shows that 100% of the minors who ask for help for gender violence are women and that their average age, in the Valencian Community, is 15 years, although the majority of the victims (85.4% ) is between 14 and 17 years old. 44.2% study Secondary School, and 26.7% Baccalaureate, yes, in a majority 57.6% with a low academic performance, a situation that Díaz encouraged to detect from the centers and also from home. The discouragement is typical of the victim, he went on to say, since her school satisfaction is low in 54.8% of the minors served.
The profile is completed with a traditional family environment, since 51.8% live with both parents and in 25.9% of cases, with the mother. And 82.7% are attacked adolescents who are part of Spanish families.
If the age of 15 is distressing - the average in Spain is 16 years -, no less so is the average 10 years that minor victims of gender violence have in their environment, which can lead to vicarious violence. The group of attacked minors up to 10 years old represents 48.4%, while in recent years there has been an increase in adolescents also attacked in their most intimate circle. In this case, 36.3% study Secondary and 34.7%, Primary.
Likewise, and also linked to this growing incidence of adolescent gender violence, the ANAR Foundation report also detects that sexual violence has also increased in calls from the Valencian Community, 34.4% in fact.
The analysis of the complex situations that these minors experience reveals that their aggressors are, in most situations, from their closest environment and are present in their daily lives. They also occur within the couple, as victims express "having felt pressured to have sexual relations or perform sexual practices with which they do not feel comfortable." Emotional blackmail and manipulation stalk them and both grooming and sexting are the most reported practices in this type of aggression.
