"The victims are being mistreated and forgotten." This is how Teresa Prados, the mother of a young woman who was raped in the toilets of the center in August 2021, expressed herself yesterday, in a press conference held outside the Màgic shopping center in Badalona. In her case, she says that all protocols, both security and care for victims, failed.
"The institutions, the police and the shopping center have abandoned us", lamented the mother of the minor, who is now 17 years old. The teenager continues to be affected by the attack to the point that she has stopped going to high school, as her mother explained yesterday.
"They didn't give him credibility at the shopping center and told him to leave," says Teresa Prados, who also claims that the Catalan police have questioned his account of the reconnaissance rounds in which he participated. In one, her daughter recognized one of the assailants who would not have actively participated in the rape, but who was among the group that threatened her. "They pressured my daughter to identify people she didn't know," he said.
Teresa Prados is the promoter of the Committee of Mothers against Sexual Violence and asks the families affected by any of these cases to join forces. He regrets that the protocol at the Child and Youth Mental Health Center (CSMIJ) did not work properly either, where the victim felt abandoned and "they only gave her pills" until she was referred to the psychiatry service of the Germans Trias hospital and Pujol, months after the attack. According to Prados, one of the identified attackers would also have participated in the rape of the 11-year-old Ghanaian girl in November. An information that the Mossos deny and claim that all the cases "are not related".
With regard to the shopping center, the mayor, Rubén Guijarro, said that he has opened a file to resolve the responsibility of the Màgic in terms of security protocols. He also criticized the management of the Mossos d'Esquadra for the fact that "we have known all the cases through the press". He also assured that the Mossos d'Esquadra "already have the aggressors identified". At the same time, measures have been taken such as "the patrolling of the Urban Guard inside the shopping centre".
Regarding the Màgic's security cameras, Rubén Guijarro reported that the viewing angles have been changed and security measures such as intercoms in the toilets have been installed. From Badalona City Council they regret that "the minors who have committed these acts are on the street leading a normal life", which is why they are demanding immediate changes in the law on minors, a request that the mayor himself has raised with the central government.
As this newspaper revealed yesterday, there are four cases of sexual assault that are being investigated. Two were group rapes of girls, and the others, isolated cases: a minor raped by an individual she met through a social network and a girl whose boyfriend forced three friends to perform fellatio.
