Just as in the rest of the Spanish State, every day in the Valencian Community there are a minimum of three cases of domestic sexist violence - the misnamed gender and/or gender violence - overwhelming and mostly against women. A minimum of six daily victims - five are women compared to one male case - suffer physical aggression from their spouse within the home. But the most serious thing is that reports of parents against children for mistreatment, threats and verbal, physical and psychological violence; multiplied on average and in general throughout the State up to 8 times more in just 4 years. The Valencian Community has broken records. The percentage multiplied up to fourteen times more compared to the state average. Something worrying, serious and very serious. A chilling fact indicating that the entire system is failing. Society, the community and the individual are failing.
Family tensions - increasingly greater and more virulent - together with a greater ineptitude of parents compared to previous times as they are forced to face more difficulties when reconciling family and work life - especially in the case of women -, the increase in family breakups due to separations and divorces - rather due to the helplessness and depression of the children - and the absence of guilt or conscience in the majority of young people; seem to be the main causes of domestic violence between children and parents and the reason for the so-called 'emperor syndrome' that many adolescents suffer and under whose symptoms they act by insulting and hitting their parents, behaving like true despots and tyrants, just as the Caesars or emperors of History were with their subjects. For current psychology, only a small part of this syndrome or disturbing behavior of young people is known, so we are at the tip of the iceberg of a complex, extensive, deep and vast problem. Hence there are multiple causes for the existence of the 'emperor syndrome' such as: the need to invest more time in professional updating, school absenteeism, failure in studies, the crisis of values and principles, the excessive comfort and comfort of the welfare state that causes exaggerated harmful materialism, etc.
The most serious thing is that the 'emperor syndrome' not only affects children and adolescents from poor, uneducated and problematic families, - ideal breeding grounds - but also those in whose homes, on the contrary, there is economy, culture and education and there are no episodes of violence - neither between the couple nor from them against the children - That is, between 10 and 20 percent of the general casuistry. And the parents of this percentage are model or correct parents who cannot be accused of promoting violence, however extraordinary or ordinary they may be, or however tolerant and consenting they may be. More than 5,500 parents filed complaints against their children for mistreatment and violence in the home before the courts between January and September 2005. Parents and children of all ages. Not just adults against teenagers. Even elderly parents against children who are already more than adults. As things are, no matter how good parents we are, our best child can suddenly turn into a 'frog' or 'black sheep'. And anyone could have a tyrant at home. Scary.
Josep Esteve Rico Sogorb
