Worrying increase in sex crimes in Barcelona
BarcelonaThe figures made public by the Catalan police this Friday leave no room for doubt: sex crimes have grown by 36% in just one year in the city of Barcelona. This is a very significant increase because, although crime in general has risen by 10%, in the case of sex crimes even the pre-pandemic figures of 2019 were exceeded. This means that we are not facing any statistical rebound effect caused by the pandemic, but a sustained increase in this type of crime that needs a response from the authorities. The first and most urgent has to be police response, since, as chief constable Josep Maria Estela admitted to ARA, there is still a long way to go to improve the Mossos' performance in the face of this problem.
As Estela also told ARA, the police will start a pilot plan in the city of Barcelona with the idea of extending it to the whole of Catalonia. The idea is to improve collaboration with nightclubs to detect any aggression or abuse, work closely with health centres that attend to victims and increase surveillance in areas that may be at risk, such as the routes between the areas where nightclubs are located and means of transport. This improvement in "police intelligence" around this type of crime is essential, seeing the weight these crimes have and the social alarm they generate in cases such as the gang rape of a 16-year-old girl in Igualada, who was also very badly injured in a very violent assault. The investigation into this case, by the way, remains open and there have been no arrests yet.
The police will also give talks in schools to raise awareness of the issue among young people, after years of detecting a resurgence in aggressive sexist behaviour among teenagers. But the issue cannot remain only in the hands of the police; instead, it must involve the whole of society. In fact, it is considered that the complaints that reach the police are only the tip of the iceberg. The stigma of being a victim still weighs heavily and, moreover, in most cases the aggressor is someone known to victim or even a relative. The victims are mostly girls.
Part of the increase in the number of reports, therefore, must be attributed to this increased awareness of the need to report crimes, to a process of loss of fear that leads to the idea that keeping quiet is not an option. Even so, measures must be taken to ensure that everyone, but especially women, can walk safely in the street, that nightlife is a space free of sexist violence and that the police are prepared to act when abuse takes place inside the family. And then there must be a victim protection network that includes every parts of the chain, from the first officer who attends the victim to the judge, including doctors, psychologists, etc. The objective has to be that being a woman does not mean being a heroine simply for exercising your rights.
