The Mossos d'Esquadra put figures on what is happening in Badalona yesterday. Unsustainable and unbearable data that confirms how in the last eleven months eight group sexual assaults have been reported in the city, with more than one perpetrator. A sexual violence carried out in the eight cases by minors, half of them unimputable, although in the last episode, the one advanced by La Vanguardia last Saturday, the investigators suspect the participation of at least one person over 18 years of age. As for the victims, they are all minors and the youngest, who also suffered the most violent of the eight assaults, was only 11 years old.
The inspector spokesperson for the Catalan police, Montserrat Escudé, appeared yesterday after the extraordinary meeting in Granollers of the regional board of the sexual violence plan that analyzed a situation that researchers have dubbed "the Badalona phenomenon."
Escudé shared the data analyzed in an operational meeting in which the events in Badalona were exclusively analyzed and to which the municipal police were not invited. Of the eight cases investigated –some by the Central Unit for Sexual Assaults (UCAS) and others by the Central Unit for Minors–, in three, the victims knew one of their aggressors. The minors identified them in two of the cases as their partners and in a third, as a friend. In the rest of the events, the victim was randomly selected and did not know her assailants.
All the attacks have been resolved by the police, although some of the participants have yet to be identified. The casuistry is varied and, in many of the assaults, one of the suspects watched the attack, cheering on the rest, even recording it, without doing anything to prevent it.
During these eleven months, the Mossos have made six arrests of suspects, including an 18-year-old. Only one, who participated in the attack on the under-11-year-old in October at the Màgic, is under guardianship in a juvenile center. The rest are all free.
The portrait of the alleged perpetrators helps to better understand the reasons why everyone is in their homes, in their neighborhood and with their lives. Of the 21 identified, twenty are minors and only one is 18 years old. Of the group of minors, thirteen are unimputable, that is, under 14 years of age. And among them are the last four identified for raping a 13-year-old girl in a field next to the expansion works of the port of Badalona.
From the detailed analysis of the eight group attacks, police analysts have discovered how at least four of the sexual offenders are repeat offenders in more than one of the reportable acts. In fact there is at least one that participates in three. An attitude that defines a pattern of conduct in which there is not only absolute impunity, but also zero empathy towards the victims.
The inspector has defined this attitude with other words. “There is an absolute lack of values and limited guardianship. We have to ask ourselves what is failing so that there are groups of minors who are attacking girls”.
In this analysis of the eight cases, the police have obtained more data that helps to better understand the phenomenon. For example, that three of the eight attacks took place in the bathrooms of the Màgic shopping center.
In fact, the terrible sequence of rapes that started in July had the worst of the attacks in October, at the point of a knife, of a minor under eleven years of age who was assaulted by surprise when they saw her alone in front of a shop window at the shopping center. . The minor was not only raped among several of her, but they threatened her, recorded her, disseminated her images and even threatened her relatives after learning of her complaint. The result? Only one of the alleged perpetrators identified is in a closed center and the rest continue with their lives, while the victim's family had to flee Badalona for fear of reprisals.
The Mossos spokeswoman avoided locating the suspects so as not to "stigmatize" them. But there are not few specialists in sexual violence who bet on the need to describe the problem in order to deal with it.
And that problem, in these multiple violations in Badalona, is called gypsy minors from the Sant Roc neighborhood. Minors with indigenous surnames, born here and whose families, in a large majority, have not collaborated with the investigators and refuse to assume any responsibility for their children in the crimes in which they are involved.
Some minors who know most of each other, who share leisure spaces, and who also have a history of property crimes. A couple reside in other neighboring municipalities.
There are other data that are also of interest to analysts because they define a pattern of behavior. The eight attacks have occurred in broad daylight, in the morning, in the afternoon, but during the day. Therefore, it is not about the sexual predator that seeks the darkness of the night.
Another fact is that in four of the five cases involving unknown perpetrators, the aggression occurred in a school environment in which the victim was surrounded, insulted, shaken, pushed, and even groped; and previously in some cases, stolen. Therefore, there is no penetration or fellatio in these episodes, but there is aggression, humiliation and vexation.
None of the victims had injuries. And some of them gave clear signs of fear by avoiding at all costs identifying the images of their alleged attackers.
