The scandal of the two WhatsApp groups in which pornographic material was sent to minors has its epicenter in a school in the center of San Sebastian, although the geographical scope of the case is expanding moment by moment and they have already identified a thousand of participants from the border town of Irun to Cantabria. The majority, however, are minors between 10 and 17 years old, schooled in a dozen centers in Gipuzkoa, and the research focuses on the administrators of the groups, all of them adults. Those investigated face high prison sentences, both due to the seriousness of the alleged crimes and, especially, due to the number of possible victims.
Judicial sources indicate that the administrators of the WhatsApp groups, at least five adults, could have committed several serious crimes, related to interacting with minors to show them sexual content or, above all, to the distribution of child pornography and inducing minors to consume it. Articles 183, 186 and 189 of the Penal Code include penalties of up to nine years in prison for these acts. The key, however, is that those affected are a thousand minors, so that the crimes would be multiplied by each of the alleged victims.
In this section, a disturbing doubt also arises: could young people who have been able to forward sexual videos in which minors appear be convicted? The answer is yes, according to the same sources. In the legal field, young people, if they are over 14 years old, can be brought before the juvenile court and, in their case, judicial measures could be decreed aimed at working in relation to raising awareness about child pornography or the ‘sex education It is less likely that measures can be taken against minors who invited other young people to participate in these groups.
The two chats under investigation had a similar way of working and shared the vocation of becoming massive. They operated by invitation through two channels. On the one hand, administrators directly invited minors; on the other hand, they wanted the minors to invite as many friends as they could.
In fact, the groups had the following titles: Meter gente hasta llegar a un milliono and Meter gente hasta que te hagas famoso. The groups were created two weeks ago, and have grown to over a thousand participants since then. From there, the administrators distributed pornography, even, allegedly, child pornography, as well as memes, homophobic, sexist comments or political proclamations linked to the far right.
The tip of the iceberg of this case was discovered on Friday, now a week ago, after a mother from the center Aldapeta María Ikastekea discovered that her son had accessed one of the chats. The parent went to the management of this religious center, the largest school in Gipuzkoa, who acted quickly both by notifying the Ertzaintza and by addressing the families and the educational community.
From here, the magnitude of the case has been growing and a widespread alarm has been triggered among the families of Gipuzkoa. The managements of the affected centers have sent the families circulars in which they request their collaboration.
The outbreak of the case has coincided with a time of growing awareness of the dangers of uncontrolled use of mobile phones at an early age. The groups of mothers and fathers who are asking for measures related to this use are multiplying and on the horizon appears the need to delay the age at which minors start using smartphones, as well as the need to promote gradual and guided contact with telephones The families of Gipuzkoa had been particularly active regarding this issue, which the Basque Minister of Education, Jokin Bildarratz, described yesterday, following the case, as a “social problem”.
