There are more and more complaints about sexual crimes in Catalonia. Only in the last quarter of the year, the increase is 19%. And that the black figure that analysts maintain exists in this criminal typology can reach 90%. Therefore, there are more facts, but there is also a greater awareness to take the step and enter a police station to explain some facts that continue to paralyze many victims, mostly women, who add to the pain suffered by the fear of reporting it.
This Tuesday, the Mossos d'Esquadra wanted to carry out a "transparency exercise" by sharing the analysis of the data from these complaints from the first four months. Now they have a new data extraction system that allows obtaining up to 300 parameters of each complaint. This objective x-ray of the reality of sexual violence has resulted in a few certainties that are far removed from what is being reported as happening. For example, chemical submission is practically non-existent in leisure spaces. In other words, there are no sexual assaults after someone has put something in the victim's drink. And two, we should begin to eradicate the term herd as a recurring phenomenon in Catalonia, because they are also a minority, at 4 percent, and with some very particular singularities, such as, for example, that in a high percentage of cases one of their members previously knew the victim. Therefore, even if they are crimes with the participation of several perpetrators, they do not operate as a herd.
The press room of the Mossos de Les Corts police station has been the setting for the appearance of the person in charge of the General Police Station for Criminal Investigation, Ramon Chacón, and the spokesperson and person in charge of the technical area of Proximity and Citizen Security, the inspector Montserrat Escude.
Between January and April of this year, 17 weeks in total, 1,247 cases of sexual violence have been reported to the Mossos. Of the total of these complaints, in 485 cases the victim claimed to have suffered a penetrative sexual assault. The police cared for 1,487 victims, of which 232 were only 12 years old or younger. And here a parenthesis because Commissioner Chacón has explained the complaint filed by the family of a child under six years of age, sexually assaulted by a group of nine-year-old children from her school. Another 329 victims were between the ages of 13 and 17. As for those arrested or investigated, a thousand, 12.3 percent are minors.
With the new statistical system, the Mossos have been able to draw up a much more precise x-ray of the map of sexual violence that allows them to "demystify stereotypes", according to Escudé. For example, all the messages related to the danger posed by the field of nightlife when, in reality, it only accounts for 14% of the reported cases.
The data have made it clear, according to Chacón, that for the moment the cases of chemical submission in nightlife venues in Catalonia are practically non-existent. In fact, in the first quarter of this year, only two episodes of the 13 that have occurred have been documented. The rest had the home as the scenario because it was chemical submission with drugs, in the majority, in the context of a relationship, or ex-partners, or dating.
Despite the data, Chacón has warned of the need to "not lower our guard" in terms of prevention in the nightlife sector, which he has congratulated for the work they are doing. For some time now, the managers and employees of the bars, lounges and nightclubs.
In the field of nightlife, 6% of the complaints are for acts -most of the cases touching- that occurred inside the premises, although the percentage rises to 10% if the cases of victims who come from a disco and are attacked in the street -here already with rapes-, and up to 14% if couples who go from the disco to a home are included, where the assault takes place. In the second section there are two examples, not from this year, but that help to understand the police message: the rapist from Igualada and the one from Poble Espanyol, both cases pending trial.
Regarding aggressions with more than one perpetrator, also called group attacks, they account for 4% of the cases -58 complaints with a total of 79 participants-. Although both the spokesperson and the commissioner have insisted on not using the term "herd" because they are very heterogeneous episodes and that are far from the modus operandi that the so-called Pamplona herd had at the time, in which the aggressors did not know anyone. the victim and everyone had an active role in the assault.
"There is no defined pattern", Chacón has insisted in relation to group aggressions, in which in most cases the perpetrators are between two and three men, 25% have associated physical violence, in 43% it is of known perpetrators and in 26% the violation is committed by only one person.
Some of these cases of group sexual assault derive from harassment or "bullying" at school, in which the attack on the victim -in this case also boys- gradually "degrades" and goes from insults and beatings to the sexual assault to vex and humiliate, but not to satisfy a sexual desire, according to Chacón.
There have also been cases of a group of three young men who intimidated a boy in the Barcelona metro with a knife and stole his cell phone and wallet and went to another carriage, where they also robbed a girl and groped her, where what moved them was the profit motive, which ended up generating a sexual attack.
In this same period analyzed, 31 sexual assaults committed by "predators" have been denounced, of which fifteen are touching committed by "portaleros", who look for the victims in doorways. Despite the complaints, the Mossos only know as a serial aggressor, the 30-year-old man, of French nationality, and surely with some type of mental illness, who in recent weeks has been involved in touching and assaulting minors in the district of Les Cortes de Barcelona. The individual is in pretrial detention.
And one last message that Chacón has wanted to value. 78% of sexual assault cases are eventually resolved. Therefore, double message, to the victims and to the perpetrators. To them, that they do not distrust, take their time, but go to denounce them because they will be accompanied and most likely the author or authors arrested. And to them; "We'll get you," warned the commissioner.
