Eight out of ten child sex offenders in Spain are family members or acquaintances

Sexual assaults on minors in Spain are a form of violence that is both widespread and hidden, targeting girls in particular and committed mainly by men from the victim’s close circle. This is revealed in a report by Save the Children, which claims that the institutional and judicial response to this scourge leaves much to be desired, especially because four years after the law for the protection of children against violence (Lopivi) was passed, many of its measures have still not been implemented or have been insufficiently implemented. The result is excessive judicial delays and the persistence of re-victimisation in the proceedings.

Assaults on minors account for almost half of all reported attacks on sexual freedom (9,200), but in reality, tens of thousands of cases go unreported, as the NGO document. This is based on an analysis of 345 sentences handed down between 2023 and 2024, which estimates that more than 15 per cent of such crimes do not reach police stations and courts.

Part of this enormous opacity derives, in addition to the young age of the victims, from the profile of the perpetrator, a man in 98 per cent of cases. Eight out of ten child sex offenders are family members or acquaintances, almost equally. In the case of the family, most of the attacks come from the father or the mother's partner. The close social circle includes friends and acquaintances of the family or of the victim, the victim's partner (if there is one) and teachers and monitors. However, in the last five years there has been an increase in assaults by strangers, which are already close to 20 per cent.

The typical victim is a girl who is first assaulted at the age of 12. Eighty-three per cent of the assaults are on girls, with even higher rates between the ages of five and nine. More than half of the assaults that reach the courts occurred between the ages of ten and 14, but almost a quarter of the victims are under the age of ten. The victim's ally in the cases that come to light is the mother. 60 per cent of the cases whose origin is known are initiated by the victim's complaint or by her mother.

The response of institutions and the justice system to this scourge has ample room for improvement in view of the abundance of delays, re-victimisation and insufficient enforcement of laws. Only a quarter of court cases are resolved within two years, almost half (48 per cent) take at least three years and 12 per cent take more than five years.

In the last two years, delays have been reduced somewhat, but there is still a notable decline compared to 2019, when two out of three sentences were handed down in two years or less, three times as many as today. An example of the problem is the case of Sara, a girl who was abused by her father from the age of ten. The trial took four years and the aggressor was only sentenced to two years and six months in prison due to the mitigating circumstance of undue delay.

A second negative element is the scarce use of pre-constituted evidence, the initial taking of the victim's statement, which is recorded and which exempts the victim from recounting the abuse before other professionals and even repeating it at trial. It is only recorded in 34.5 per cent of cases. More than half have to tell their story no less than two or three times (police, prosecutor and judge) before the trial itself. This is despite the fact that the 'only yes means yes' law, which has been in force for three years, obliges at least all children under the age of 14 to take pre-trial evidence.

"Victims' testimony is the main evidence in most cases. That is why it is worrying that pre-constituted evidence is still not widespread and that many children have to relive the trauma over and over again throughout the process, even during the oral trial," Catalina Perazzo, head of Save the Children, said.

The NGO considers that part of these deficiencies persist because four years after the approval of the Lopivi, the specialised justice system ordered by the law is still not functioning, and because when it is implemented this autumn it will be "manifestly insufficient". The government only plans to create three courts against sexual violence against minors (Madrid, Barcelona and Malaga) and has not taken steps to set up the specific prosecutor's office or multidisciplinary technical teams. This means, it adds, that the government is leaving the majority of assaulted minors outside the specialised justice system.

The organisation also calls for the creation in all autonomous regions of "children's houses", facilities designed to make the child feel comfortable and calm during his or her statement and where psychologists, social workers, experts and jurists coordinate to build the case without re-victimising the child. The model is key to generalising the single examination and statement and converting them into pre-constituted evidence. Experience shows that they reduce delays by a third and increase convictions by up to 85 per cent.