Sexual assaults have a clear victim, women, something that half of the population knows and learns to live with that fear. Regardless of age. Because both girls and adults suffer from it. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior collected by the NGO Save the Children, 45% of the complaints of sexual assault (8,428) had minors as victims and of them, 82% are girls and adolescents. “Being a girl is a determining risk factor for suffering an attack of this type,” says the onegé.
Regarding the aggressors, the data on sexual crimes committed by both adults and adolescents between 14 and 17 years of age (the age at which there is criminal responsibility) reflect that in 97% of cases the aggressor is a man. no criminal record. This was indicated by Save the Children during the presentation of Silenciadas, an investigation into sexual assaults in childhood that shows how the construction of sexuality is marked by inequality.
The report also includes the increase in attacks committed in groups, by so-called ‘packs’. According to the Ministry of the Interior, the number of sexual assaults committed by more than one person, regardless of their age, has increased by more than 64% in the last five years. A brutal increase but far from the numbers of individual sexual assaults: in 2022 they represented 4.2% of the total crimes reported due to sexual violence.
Regarding the childhood and adolescence that suffers these attacks in packs, the profile of the victim is that of a single adolescent, with an average age of 15 years, whose aggressors are of a similar age and those she knows before and the crime is usually committed with penetration and violence.
Save the Children reveals that more than 10% of multiple sexual assaults are recorded or photographed” as a sign of dominance and awaiting recognition from the peer group, which clearly shows how new technologies and the Internet affect way of relating to children and adolescents,” says Catalina Perazzo, director of Political and Social Advocacy at Save the Children.
This report joins another recently presented based on the analysis of nearly 400 sentences, which reveals that in 80% of the cases in which the victims are minors (both boys and girls, although these represent 82%). The aggressor is a person from the child’s family or acquaintance, and 96% of the abusers do not have a criminal record related to sexual violence.
And again, after these crimes, the consumption of pornography. Save the Children remembers that the digital environment is another space in which childhood and adolescence develop and pornography is also conditioning the way in which minors relate to each other.
According to the organization’s Sexual Misinformation report, almost 7 out of 10 adolescents consume pornography, and on average they access sexual content for the first time at age 12. A pornography that is for mass consumption online, free and unlimited and its contents are mostly based on violence and inequality. “Thus, pornography shows aspects that boys and girls can reproduce, such as the lack of need to ask for consent or the refusal of consent on the part of men, the absence of contraceptive methods, the stigmatization of bodies and objectification as objects of pleasure. women or the establishment of unequal roles: dominance (boys) and submission (girls),” the entity points out.
“Pornography cannot be the sexuality teacher of children and adolescents because we are talking about fiction, it is not real. It’s as if we taught teenagers how to drive with car racing video games. Therefore, it is essential to implement affective-sexual education from an early age so that boys and girls can establish healthier and more egalitarian relationships, as well as provide them with tools so that they can make safe use of the Internet and social networks,” explains Catalina. Perazzo, director of Political and Social Advocacy at Save the Children.
