The director of the Canary Islands Institute for Equality (ICI), Ana Brito, reported this Friday that calls to the Emergency Device for Abused Women increased by 40% last September and highlighted that 4% of them alluded to cases of sexual violence.
Before participating in the inauguration of a conference on Crimes against sexual freedom in the era of consent, Brito recalled that the ICI has a co-education department that works with schools, hand in hand with the Regional Ministry of Education, from an early age until students finish high school.
"Our interest is that this collaboration with the Ministry of Education continues, in such a way that the areas of equality and prevention become core subjects throughout education, also in the university," she said.
Regarding the calls received last September at 112 and referred to the DEMA, Brito detailed that "it is not only women who report, but there is also a significant percentage of external observers and family members."
"Sometimes they are young people who do not understand what has happened to them because more and more young women are suffering sexual violence for reasons such as early access to pornography through the internet" which leads to "that subsequent sexual behavior is not adequate, since it is not with aggression or imposition," she said.
The president of the Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence of the General Council of the Judiciary, Ángeles Carmona, also participated in the inauguration of these conferences, who stressed that sexual violence crimes affect "disproportionately" women and minors.
Carmona urged Spanish society to commit to rejecting this type of behavior, while asking for the help of all institutions, especially educational and health institutions, to learn to detect, especially in minors, when they may be victims of such serious crimes that generate psychological consequences "for life."
According to Carmona, magistrates of the Supreme Court are issuing "exemplary sentences, where the gender perspective is applied, which is fundamental in this type of crime, so that the whole society rejects any behavior, however minimal it may seem, that may affect the dignity and freedom of women and children."
The president of the Observatory said that this institution, created under Organic Law 1/2004, of December 28, on Comprehensive Protection Measures against Gender Violence, "misses the fact that the protocols for the prevention of harassment in the field of education are updated and implemented with more forcefulness and professionalism."
"Educators are the closest to children who may be suffering these abuses and we have already seen that the majority of these crimes come from family members close to the child himself, the parents, the mother's partner or grandparents," she added.
Carmona said that in the case of adults, 99% of the victims are women, while when we talk about minors, both boys and girls can be affected by this type of crime, which is why she stressed that it is important that teachers are trained so that they can detect and report these cases.
These are very serious crimes and any of us has the obligation to report when a child is being a victim of violence, especially educators, who are close to them, she asserted.
Vicarious violence
Ángeles Carmona alluded to vicarious violence and warned that, unfortunately, there are many children who are suffering the violence of their mothers' or fathers' partners, which is exercised "to cause the greatest pain that can be caused: that they harm the children" and appealed to the role that teachers and health workers must play in detecting them.
For the president of the Observatory, important steps are being taken against the normalization or trivialization of these behaviors, thanks, in part, to the messages spread by the media against this type of violence, "which has always existed, but now we are denouncing it and society is rebelling against it, which is changing the sensitivity" of citizens.
"Let all sexual aggressors know that the action of justice will fall on them with very serious penalties and with exemplary sentences, such as those that are already being handed down in all courts, especially in the Supreme Court," she warned.
