The brutal group rapes with minor victims –some of them girls as young as 11– make it necessary to seek explanations for so much violence and cruelty at such an early age. How have you got here? What is failing? Can these heartless sexual assaults be prevented? These are some of the questions asked in this new face-to-face in La Vanguardia between Marina Subirats, emeritus professor of Sociology, public manager and education specialist, and José Ramón Ubieto, clinical psychologist, psychoanalyst and member of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis. A dialogue in which both experts travel back in time and go back several years to come to the conclusion that what is harvested is harvested. They agree that there is no good sexual education, masculinity continues to be an uncured disease and access to violent porn is doing a lot of damage. But they are not the only causes of this brutal reality. School absenteeism, the lack of social policies that protect or create attractive spaces for these minors or a socialization that grants roles and encourages violence and educates them to contain it, are other evils that feed these precocious children. monsters.
Since 2016, gang rapes have increased by 54%. There are three sexual assaults every two days. What's going on?
M.S. These are very serious data, but it is difficult to assess whether there are more attacks of this type now than years ago. What is clear is that there is more talk about this matter at the moment, but we must not forget that years ago there was absolute silence about these attacks. And now instead this information is disclosed, which is very good.
J.R.U. What is obvious is that the visibility of these sexual assaults has increased and also the denunciations. 50 years ago a slap was not reported; now yes. The negative social consideration towards this type of crime would be the key to making it more visible today.
M.S. For a long time, the woman was always to blame for everything that happened to her. "He must have done something for that to have happened to him," she said to herself. And the victim was silent. We are now turning that perception around. I think that in the cure for this feeling of guilt there was a key date (2017/18) with the Me Too campaign. They began to point out and machismo is now seen as something negative, a shame for the man who practices it.
We were talking about the increase in gang rapes. Why so many group attacks and, especially, among minors?
J.R.U. The adolescent needs to do things in a group, verify that he is up to what is happening around him. The minor has to discover a sexuality that he is unaware of and the group, when this experience is sought with aggression, helps disinhibition and also ensures anonymity. A child sex offender recently told me, "I would never have dared to do this alone." When they discover sexuality, their first support is the group.
But if we have arrived here, many things have had to be done wrong in the education of that minor to mold him into the cruelest of sexual offenders.
M.S. They are socialized, already very young, for violence; without anyone being aware of it, neither parents nor teachers. I have heard at a children's soccer game how a father yelled at his son: "Kill him!" They are already incited to violence from a young age, even before birth, when choosing the color of the room, the toys, the life project that that father and mother imagine for their daughter or son... The child is encouraged to aggressiveness; the girl is educated to contain her. He is educated to be the one in charge, the one who takes the initiative. In many schools the gardens disappeared to set up soccer goals in those school yards. They were kicking a ball and they were pushed into a corner. The girls learn and assume that the space is not theirs, they think the opposite.
Would that scene you draw be a clear model of masculinity?
M.S. Yes, we must end the privileges of masculinity. And much work remains to be done. A teacher told me that a minor had pulled down a classmate's panties and they called her mother. What did she answer this? "That's good, we already know that my son is not a fag." In this way, she justified the boy playing the role of man, that of masculinity. It is essential to put an end to this model, but of course that means losing privileges for them.
J.R.U. That patio that Marina draws, with boys playing soccer and girls sitting in a corner, has changed with the digital world. Now it is more normal to see one and the other doing the same: typing on their mobile phones and that is already beginning to erase the differences between the sexes, when talking about spaces.
Would these new technologies also have their part to blame for these early violations, by facilitating uncontrolled access to the most violent porn on these phones?
J.R.U. Definitely. The easy access they have to sadistic and violent porn, with a clear objectification of women, is one of the factors that would explain the brutality of these attacks. But not the only one. A minor once told me that he thought that what he saw in those videos – drowning, brutal anal intercourse… – was normal or usual. That porn is the only reference they have at the beginning of their sexual life.
But, as you repeat, sexuality is an experience, not a subject.
J.R.U. That's right, sexuality is something you have to experience, stages you have to go through. The lack of that sexual education causes that violent porn to be imitated. And this has to worry us even more due to the fact that these videos are widely consumed among children under the age of twelve and fifteen.
M.S. And a no less serious problem is that many families do not know where the limits are in the rules. That uncontrolled access to pornography is paying dearly. We have suspended sex education. More than information, disinformation has been imparted. Freedom is not having the right to what I want. Violence is applauded in much of the information that runs through social networks and also in that broadcast by the media. Sexuality has also become, in these channels, a capital –both between girls and boys– to achieve success. And that educates very little. You have to change the culture. Children are not born violent, this behavior, I insist, is driven by this socialization of violence. We deny the child empathy. "You can't cry," we tell him.
J.R.U. Porn alone does not explain these violations in Badalona. The causes are various. Surely, among the aggressors there is a violence internalized by scenes that they have already seen in their homes and surely these minors live in a situation of helplessness, without the family or the system worrying about their well-being.
The latest group rapes in Badalona have revived the debate on the criminal age. What do you think about the need or not to punish minors under 14 years of age, now unimputable?
J.R.U. That is the easiest solution, but a child under 13 is a child and you have to help him and trust that he can rectify that behavior. Here we protect in centers and not with foster families. Those centers are overflowing and the inmates are escaping. That is not protection, it is helplessness. It would still be more effective to refer that punishment to parents who do not comply with the functions required of a parent.
M.S. Criminal proceedings do not solve the problems. It is a mistake to put the emphasis there. For a year or so of internment or prison they will not stop raping. The work should focus on protecting, educating and giving opportunities to these minors to re-educate them. So they will have another vision of this world.
What about truancy? In the neighborhood where the majority of those identified by the attacks in Badalona live, there are many schoolchildren who, despite being compulsory, do not go to class.
M.S. It is necessary to watch, yes, the attendance to the school in the stage of compulsory schooling. And that responsibility falls on the municipalities. It is essential to identify these students and talk to their families. The school is the first place to proclaim equality and can be a repairing scene for chaos.
J.R.U. One thing is clear and I can affirm it from my own experience: when these minors are offered an opportunity, they appreciate it. Investment in social policies is a disaster and it does not seem so difficult to invest in attractive spaces for these adolescents, which are meeting places.
One of the minors who was raped in a group in Badalona was unable to put a number when they asked her how many minors she had assaulting her. How do you overcome a trauma like this at such a young age?
M.S. It is clear that in a situation as serious as this, this minor loses her human condition. And the most serious thing, I repeat, is that, despite this brutal aggression, surely this minor, due to this socialization of women, is going to have a great feeling of guilt. That is a tremendous burden that is not in male socialization, since they are expected to step over it.
J.R.U. That person is nothing more than an object for the aggressors. There is an absolute dehumanization. And in these cases, restorative justice is very necessary, but what is really important is to work with that minor so that she recovers some of that lost dignity. And eliminate, if she has it, that feeling of guilt that Marina was talking about. Here, working with the family to repair so much damage is also essential.
