Imagine a scene in which a five-year-old girl is asked to reproduce an episode of sexual abuse suffered. Would you indicate your refusal, your rejection, your mutism, that you have no credibility? For some judges, yes. And it is not an imaginary scene. That's why we ask ourselves, Does Spanish justice work against child abuse?
According to Save the Children, he denounces in his report “Spanish justice against child sexual abuse in the family environment”, there are many deficiencies in judicial processes that lead to serious situations of risk and lack of protection of minors.
Based on the analysis of specific cases, some of which put the creeps, and records of Provincial Hearings, the report reconstructs the judicial path that a child and their legal representative have to follow in Spain to achieve protection and justice in cases of child sexual abuse. It is not difficult to find cases among the abundant stories of abuse in Spain (and those that are unknown ...).
According to the heads of the NGO, the cases and the records analyzed confirm that in Spain international standards for the protection of children in the field of the Administration of Justice are not being applied and that it is urgent to review the regulations and judicial practice.
Main deficiencies detected in complaints of abuse
Many times the credibility of the victim is questioned because of his young age, or even, after an expert test, the cause is filed for not being able to obtain sufficient information from the child.
The cases analyzed gather an important evidence base (physical and psychological) of sexual abuse, including the direct testimony of the affected girl or boy, who attend or have gone to therapies in public or private centers as victims of sexual abuse.
In spite of that, the complaints filed to try to clarify the facts have been filed without having carried out an exhaustive investigation on them. The girls and boys affected were very young (between seventeen months and four years) at the time of identifying the signs of sexual abuse that led to the first complaint.
The main starting barrier that he has identified in the Save The Children report is that neither the child nor the parent who denounces is credible for judges, prosecutors and lawyers, who often claim lack of credibility of the victims or that they are manipulated.
And although there will be cases of all kinds, of course what can not be expected is that children participate in a judicial process as an adult, without taking into account the psychological peculiarities of children, which cannot be expressed as the elderly, and that manage their emotions in the face of such serious events in a different way.
But the young age should be an incentive to clarify the facts, not an added impediment. And precisely because of the age difference, the presence of specialized professionals in these cases would be necessary.
Neither the investigating judges, the prosecutors, the public lawyers or the psychosocial or forensic teams of the courts involved in the process are required to specialize, a fact that can have a great impact in promoting the investigation, properly assess the evidence ...
That a child who has suffered sexual abuse is forced to live with his aggressor or that the visit regime does not contemplate that a process is open are other deficiencies observed and that could be improved.
If the judicial system fails, it will have to be improved
If, once the deficiencies have been detected, we stand still, we will never get the children victims of sexual abuse to receive fair treatment. Therefore, Save the Children considers it urgent to make legislative changes and a series of institutional improvements.
These are necessary to guarantee the full application in the administration of Spanish justice of the principles and measures provided for in international and European instruments that shape the status of minor victims in legal proceedings and that oblige states to effectively protect of boys and girls facing sexual violence.
To improve from Save the Children demand the implementation of the following recommendations, which we can read extensively in the aforementioned report:
- Approve regulations that expressly recognize and promote the rights of children in judicial proceedings.
- Ensure adequate preparation and specialization of professionals and appropriate methodologies.
- Guarantee specialized advice and information to the legal representatives of children who report a case of child abuse.
- Ensure that attacks are not repeated through judicial protection measures.
- Guarantee the highest priority in the judicial investigation of these crimes.
Many of these recommendations are included in the Directive on combating sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children and child pornography, which the European Union approved at the end of 2011 and that all Member States must implement before end of 2013
Are you trying to do something to achieve that goal? Or will cases like this just continue to happen, which often go unnoticed? And that is the greatest evil, in my opinion.
That the children's voice is not heard, and that if they were occurring in other cases deficiencies as flagrant in Spanish justice as in cases of child abuse, already it would be acting, we would already hear about it more in the news, in the newspapers. And I don't shut up, precisely because we talk about children.
Official Site | Save the Children
In Babies and more | Seven steps to prevent child sexual abuse, What to tell a child to prevent abuse
