Who should investigate the rapes of girls who report them as adults? Judges and prosecutors keep passing the buck.

BarcelonaOver the past year, a new specialization has emerged in the courts, focused on investigating crimes in which the victims are children or adolescents. This has raised several questions about the limits of its jurisdiction and remains a source of disagreement between the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office. The law that designed this specialty It did not specify, for example, whether sexual assaults against girls should fall under these new courts or under those specializing in violence against women, to which The same judicial reform assigned jurisdiction over all sexual offenses.The reform also failed to stipulate who should handle cases of sexual assault against girls reported years later, when the victims are adults, as a Barcelona judge has now raised in a ruling obtained by ARA. Within the judiciary and the Public Prosecutor's Office, there were differing opinions in this debate. On the one hand, some argued that sexual violence against girls should be investigated by the same courts that handle sexual assaults against adults. So far this year, as a result of this same reform, courts specializing in violence against women have jurisdiction over all sexual violence, not just domestic violence, as was the case previously. On the other hand, other legal experts warned that this would mean that sexual assaults against minors would have to be referred to different courts depending on whether the victim was a boy or a girl: boys would go to juvenile courts and girls to courts specializing in violence against women. Another argument in favor of leaving all cases in the hands of the new child abuse courts is their specialization and the fact that they utilize resources such as the Barnahus, where children can be interviewed by psychologists and educators in a less hostile environment than a courtroom.

Supreme Court and Public Prosecutor's Office divided

At the beginning of the year, the Supreme Court clarified in a ruling that sexual assaults against minors fall under the jurisdiction of the new specialized courts for violence against children—currently only established in Barcelona, ​​Madrid, and Málaga—and that where such specialized courts do not exist, the investigating courts will handle these cases. This is what the Barcelona Prosecutor's Office is doing, having launched a pioneering service specializing in children and vulnerable victimsBut now it has run up against a contrary order from the State Attorney General's Office. Attorney General Teresa Peramato has publicly criticized the Supreme Court's position, arguing that it fails to consider the gender perspective, and has ordered all prosecutors to refer cases of sexual assault against girls to the courts specializing in violence against women. The chief prosecutor of Barcelona, ​​Neus Pujal, admitted that Peramato's order had surprised them, but said she was confident that there would be an exception in the three cities in the country that do have a specialized children's court. For now, this is happening in Barcelona—these cases remain in the hands of the prosecutors for children and adolescents—but their written submissions always require the approval of the delegated prosecutor for violence against women. Old cases

With this debate still raging, another disagreement has now emerged in the Barcelona courts due to a lack of clarity regarding the jurisdiction of these tribunals. Which courts should handle cases of sexual assault against girls who report the crimes years later, when they are already adults?

When Judge Cristina Serrano, of the Barcelona Court for Violence Against Women No. 2, received such a case, she considered it outside her jurisdiction and sent it to the new court for violence against children and adolescents. That court returned the case to her, believing that she should handle it because the complainant was now an adult. Now Serrano has taken the matter to the Barcelona Provincial Court to determine which court should handle it. The ball is now in the Provincial Court's court.

Judicial sources say that these kinds of clarifications are common when there is a reform of the judicial system or when a new law comes into effect. The goal is for a higher body—the Provincial Court for the district, and ultimately the Supreme Court for the entire country—to unify the criteria followed by judges to avoid contradictions.