The report of the State Attorney General’s Office on 2023 data reveals a new increase in sexual crimes committed by minors, an “alarming spiral that has continued to grow,” according to the Public Ministry, over the last six years. The document explains that last year, 3,185 procedures were initiated for crimes against sexual freedom, compared to 2,947 the previous year, an increase of more than 8% over a year that leads researchers to highlight “the imperative need to strengthen prevention.” and sexual and digital education.
The part of the 2023 report presented this Thursday at the opening of the judicial year explains that, in general, delinquency related to minors “has decreased”: there is a slight increase in the preliminary procedures initiated but the reform files are decreasing and the indictment documents presented against minors. The prosecutor’s office detects a “significant increase” in complaints filed because the suspect is a minor under 14 years of age and is not imputable by law: 45% more than in 2022.
Territorial prosecutors such as Madrid, Barcelona, Orense or the Balearic Islands show in their documents their “serious concern and worry” about the increase in delinquency among minors with “increasingly violent” behavior. “Domestic” violence, sexual violence or “abuse or misuse” of the Internet, “with a particular incidence in the field of moral harassment”, reported the latter by several prosecutors of Aragon.
At the national level, investigations into minors for crimes such as robberies with force or violence, those related to road safety, public order are decreasing, and cases of drug trafficking and consumption are also falling sharply. But the data increase alarmingly, according to the prosecutor’s office, when looking at violence against parents, siblings, gender violence, crimes against sexual freedom and, to a lesser extent, school bullying and all crimes committed on the Internet.
Regarding sexual crimes, the State Attorney General’s Office speaks directly of an “alarming spiral that continues to grow” when comparing the data from 2023 with those from 2017. Year-on-year, last year, 3,185 procedures were initiated against minors for crimes against sexual freedom, which unify the old division between sexual abuse and assault. An increase of 8.07% compared to the 2,947 opened in 2022 compared to previous years: in 2015, there were 1,081 of these procedures and in 2017, 1,386. In less than a decade, therefore, these investigations against minors have tripled.
The data on convictions of minors for sexual offences, compiled annually by the General Council of the Judiciary, also reinforce this increase. The latest available data, from 2022, show a total of 636 convictions of minors for sexual offences, compared to, for example, the 408 minors convicted in 2018.
The Attorney General’s Office reflects the concern expressed by its territorial departments and explains that the reasons for this increase are “complex” but highlights several: “The lack of adequate training in ethical-sexual matters, alcohol consumption, early access to pornographic content without adequate sex education” but also “the proven trivialization of sexual relations and intimacy in particular”. “The concern about the increase in these crimes is common to all categories of minors, highlighting the urgent need to strengthen prevention and sexual and digital education”, adds the report presented today.
Increase in sexist violence
The report also detects an increase in proceedings initiated against minors in matters of gender violence: an increase of 11% compared to 2022, from 727 cases recorded to a total of 807, the highest figure in the last four years. In 2018, for example, the number of these investigations reached 944. Investigations of minors for assaults against parents and siblings also increased, although less pronounced, 1.94% more compared to 2022 with 4,332 cases, although far from the peak of 2019, when more than 5,000 procedures were registered.
In this new report, the Prosecutor’s Office explains that the analysis of these figures leads to the conclusion that “the great efforts made in terms of training in equality do not affect our young people, predominating a deficient education in values that the educational environment of the minor “He did not know how to mitigate it.”
The 2023 report, with almost 1,500 pages of content, also includes the conclusions of the sections of the public prosecutor’s office specializing in economic crimes, which claim to have reported last year the largest accumulated tax fraud in their recent history: 849 million euros, “the largest in recent years.” The Public Prosecutor’s Office also regrets that the traffic jam in the courts and the complexity of these cases, which in a third of cases result in a conviction for compliance, result in sentence reductions due to unjustified delays. “The delay is not so much generated by the complexity of the investigation, but by the technical-legal complexity of the case itself.”
One of the most controversial aspects of the latest annual reports of the Public Prosecutor’s Office has been the inclusion of movements such as Futuro Vegetal in the statistics related to terrorism, when there are environmental activists accused in various legal cases but not for this type of crime. This year, as announced by elDiario.es, the Public Prosecutor’s Office has renounced this consideration, also avoiding talking about anarchist terrorism.
