In Badalona yesterday there was no talk of anything else. On Saturday afternoon, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped by a pack of at least eight assailants. A kilometer and a half separates the place, at number 208 of Carrer Eduard Maristany, from the Màgic shopping center, the sad scene of another four sexual assaults in the bathrooms in recent months.
The Central Sexual Assault Unit (UCAS) of the Mossos d'Esquadra has been working around the clock since Saturday night to reconstruct the events and name all the young people who took part in the sexual assault. At least four have already been identified, but they are under the age of 14. In other words, his condition of imputability makes his arrest impossible.
The police work focuses on the rest of the minors, at least four others, who went to the open field at the request of the first young man who had met the victim.
You have to try to put yourself in the shoes of a victim who has just suffered an attack of a similar scope to understand that it is not easy for her to identify suspects, and not even to reconstruct what happened that afternoon. That is why the investigators need to prove that the rest of the suspects were in the open and participated in the attack, before proceeding with the arrest.
The titular magistrate of court 1 in Badalona, on duty at the weekend, works together with the specialized police officers of the central unit. There is no rest in this priority research. For hours, the UCAS offices of the Les Corts police station have been watching all the security cameras around the scene of the attack to locate all the members of a pack that, according to the victim, arrived in two shifts
At the same time, practically in parallel, the laboratories of the scientific police work with the remains collected at the scene of the attack, with the clothes and the body of the victim and with the sweatshirts that some suspects left there on at which point they stampeded out when they saw the first patrol car approaching.
The genetic material must be matched with that of the suspects. Telephones also play an essential role in research. Not only because each of them will mark the location of the investigated, but also because of the messages they exchanged.
The victim said she had met a young man on Instagram the previous week. He showed investigators the messages. She met him in Badalona, and they had consensual sex. Then three more friends from the first appeared initially, and three more a little later.
The messages are important for this reason, with the call that the alleged instigator was able to make with the rest of his friends.
The future mayor of Badalona, Xavier Albiol, spoke in the morning on Jordi Basté's program on RAC1 and, beyond the concern for the facts and the repetition of the scene, the city, and with minors as protagonists, announced that the Consistory will act as private prosecution in the judicial case that is opened.
The Consistory has offered the victim's family all the social, health and psychological support they need. The minor is cared for by Can Ruti's team of specialists, but has a head office with whom she maintains dialogue and with whom she can communicate at any time of the day.
