The annual report of the Prosecutor's Office is an x-ray of justice. The ultimate objective of the public ministry is not to prosecute, but to defend legality. This watchtower, however, is a seismograph of delinquency and crimes. The summary corresponding to 2022 uncovers “the alarming upward trend” (these are the words of the attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz) of violent behavior by minors.
Homicides and sexual assaults committed by perpetrators who are not yet of legal age have increased. The Prosecutor's Office raises a cry of warning. Last year there was a “worrying” increase in attacks on life, both attempted and completed, carried out by minors. These crimes were 101 in 2022, 14.7% more than the previous year, but the upward curve comes from afar.
The number of early homicides was 50 in 2017 and reached 88 in 2021. This same chapter includes the 11,000 annual cases initiated for crimes of injury, which the document attributes to “violent and violent youth groups and gangs.” of an identity nature that proliferate in urban environments.” But if the involvement of minors in these events is serious, sexual assaults are equally or more worrying.
Attacks against sexual freedom have set off alarm bells and have increased by 116% in the last five years. If in 2027 456 cases were opened for this reason, last year there were 974, including gang rapes. But here too we can speak of a sustained increase. The attacks were already many in 2021 (688, but that figure is 45.8% lower than that of 2022).
What are the causes? The Prosecutor's Office alludes to the deficiencies in the sexual education that young people receive, the early access to the most violent and dehumanizing pornography, as well as "the trivialization of the concept of sexual relations." The tax document specifies that the data corresponds to the period prior to the approval of the "only yes is yes" law, in October 2022, when a separate statistics was opened and whose conclusions have not yet been made public.
The Prosecutor's Office has also warned against bullying, which is now mainly perpetrated through social networks and cyber attacks. New technologies, the report says, can be very useful, but they also “have negative influences,” especially on minors. A very prominent aspect is that of influencers and digital leaders who incite their followers to self-harm or who engage them in challenges that put their health at serious risk.
Another notable aspect of the memory refers to the role of the Church in cases of pedophilia. Defenders of legality consider that the subsidiary civil liability of religious institutions should be "reviewed", which often take refuge in the prescription of crimes to avoid their responsibilities and even their "possible cover-up conduct", without compensating or “moral damages or psychological injuries.”
