The Generalitat considers that sexual violence committed by or against children and young people in Catalonia is "a very serious social problem", which is why it has mobilized six government departments: Social Rights, Justice, Interior, Health, Education and Equality and Feminism. Councilor Carles Campuzano, head of the first of these areas, presented this morning the measures they have devised to combat and prevent this scourge.
Among other initiatives, Catalonia proposes a “school model of comprehensive sexual education” and studying how to limit “minors' access to pornographic digital content.” All the minors from the Sant Roc neighborhood involved in the Badalona group rapes have admitted to consuming these contents “with a harmful effect”, which naturalize “hypersexuality” and distort the image of sex and women.
The Generalitat will also establish “interpretive and guiding criteria” so that local leisure security professionals can report harassers when they commit actions that are not crimes or misdemeanors, but “administrative infractions.” This is stated in a protocol “in the review and updating phase” that will establish sanctions “in situations of sexual harassment not provided for in the Penal Code.”
There are more than twenty proposals in total, which focus on prevention and care for victims, including those of vicarious violence, such as mothers who will be compensated "for the murder of their daughter or son." It is also about the authors (often unimpeachable) “taking responsibility.” The alarm was raised following eight complaints against minors, “many aged 13 or younger”, for attacks on girls and young people.
The Government's concern took shape in an assignment to a group of experts to understand "the scope and causes of these attacks." Its report and conclusions were also presented yesterday. Avoiding recidivism and impunity is one of the axes of their research, but this must be compatible with a reality: “A child of 13 years old or younger is not capable of understanding the injustice of an event like an adult would.”
Certain press should sing the mea culpa, maintain these experts and the Generalitat, which wants to reach an agreement with the College of Journalists on a “manual of good practices” against “stereotypes and labels.” The working group insists that “there is no single ethnic or family profile” of the Badalona attackers. They do have a connection: they have grown up in Sant Roc. But not all are gypsies, despite the “stigmatizing speeches.”
Sant Roc has “chronic poverty, unemployment, school absenteeism and oversaturated social services.” This does not explain everything, but it can be “a risk factor.” Experts criticize the disconnection and lack of data exchange between the departments of the Generalitat, “which makes it difficult to analyze causes, profiles and trends.” They have only received information (“complete, but disconnected”) from five of the 18 reported.
Despite the difficulties, and with contradictions, as will be seen below, the working group rules out an upward trend in sexual assaults committed by minors under 13 years of age and attributes this belief to the fact that “we are facing a historically very invisible reality” and which is now changing. These own experts, however, recall that the data from the Juvenile Prosecutor's Office do not agree with such an opinion.
Reports of violence and sexual assaults against minors maintain a “growing trend,” states the Prosecutor's Office. We should ask ourselves, the report objects, if there are more crimes now or if more are reported. Another apparent contradiction is that the work also admits that not all cases are reported and that we only know “the tip of the iceberg of sexual violence in childhood and adolescence.”
An explosive cocktail determines this violence: “The impact of social networks and the wide exposure to sexist mass pornography on children and adolescents who lack comprehensive and adequate sexual education.” In any case, the authors emphasize that cases like those in Badalona and others cannot make us forget that sexual violence is “mainly carried out by adults.”
And another dangerous correlation: puberty has been brought forward “between nine months and a year”, which coincides with a stimulation to imitate adult behaviors “promoted by social networks, the ease of mobile phones and a digital environment without the reflective accompaniment of Adults". The consequence is that some minors feel the need to exhibit “sexual violence through the dissemination of videos.”
Pornography (its consumption begins at age 8 and becomes generalized at age 14) leaves neural traces “that will affect subsequent behaviors in brains that are very malleable and biologically prone to imitate the behaviors they observe.” And what do they observe: violence, sex without affection and relationships of domination (them) and submission (them). We lack, the document says, “digital literacy.”
The working group, which has had the collaboration of seven senior officials of the Generalitat, is made up of experts against abuse (Vicki Bernadet), professors of Neuroeducation (David Bueno and Anna Forés), sociologists (Sergio Porcel), activists for the promotion of the gypsy people (Mercedes Porras), gynecologists (Raquel Tulleuda), lawyers (Carla Vall) and doctors in Social and Political Sciences (Eduard Vallory).
All children, “even those who rape,” deserve protection. Lowering the criminal age, they say, “does not reduce attacks” because education “eradicates recidivism more than prison.” Their advice (summarized in the Decalogue below) insists that comprehensive sexuality education in schools is “neither accredited nor regulated” and that more policies are necessary for “structural prevention and comprehensive repair.”
