Badalona added yesterday the fourth case of sexual assault in the Màgic de Badalona shopping center in less than eight months. The last one came to light yesterday and activated all the alarms that forced the City Council and the security forces to act inside the commercial galleries.
A young woman who is now 17 years old denounced last August at the Mossos de Badalona police station that a group of 10 young people, under threats with knives, forced her to give fellatio to three of them in the downtown toilets, while the seven others guarded the outside. In a moment of confusion, the victim managed to flee to go to the Mossos police station. In her statement, she reported that something similar had happened to a friend of hers a year ago, but that in this case she did not file a complaint.
Of the four cases investigated, one of them is that of the 11-year-old Ghanaian girl who was raped last November by a group of four minors, who are not criminally responsible and who live in the Sant Roc neighborhood of Badalona. The event had a great media repercussion that gave rise to a broad social debate on the criminal responsibility of minors who commit this type of sexual assault. One of the rapists is admitted to a juvenile center, another three are supervised by the General Directorate for Child Care, just like the adolescent who threatened to kill the victim's brother.
The Catalan police have opened an investigation into three more cases of group sexual assaults inside the commercial establishment. One of the stories that arises from the complaints refers to a sexual assault, also in the Màgic toilets, by an adult on a minor under 14 years of age with whom he would have met through a social network. Under the pretext of entering the toilets to kiss, the assailant pulled the minor's pants down and sexually assaulted him without his consent.
A fourth rape took place in the same setting, the mall bathrooms, the last week of February. A 14-year-old girl went to the emergency department of the Can Ruti Hospital with injuries caused by an assault. Investigators found out that the minor had been assaulted by her sentimental partner and forced to have oral sex with three friends, against her will.
The new known cases have had a great impact on the city. A group of mothers has organized to protest the attacks in the shopping center area.
The Badalona City Council, for its part, in view of the new information about more sexual assaults, held a meeting yesterday with all the agents involved: Mossos, Guàrdia Urbana, the Màgic shopping center and specialists from the Germans Trias i Pujol hospital.
The Badalona municipal government has established several measures to improve security protocols in the shopping center. Operations have been activated inside the compound, with foot patrols from the Mossos and Guàrdia Urbana, and plainclothes operations have not been ruled out.
The City Council has activated all the resources to help the victims and their families. In parallel, the local government continues to review with other administrations the action and intervention protocols to detect and prevent possible new cases in shopping centers and leisure spaces.
Along the same lines, the municipal quadripartite maintains the will that the City Council appear, as a private prosecution, in all cases to defend the victims of aggression.
