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The normal thing today is for a 17-year-old girl to talk like this: «These days I have stayed to live with him, he beats me, he insults me and he is on me all day. I am obliged to listen to you. He has drowned me, kicked me and hit me, as usual ... ». Gender violence towards a minor confined with her aggressor, that there are.

There is also sexual abuse and physical abuse - «my father beats me and touches my private parts, insults me all day and I tell him to leave me and not stop ... I feel trapped» -, psychological abuse, self-harm - « My family stopped talking to me and I feel so lonely because I can't speak to anyone who cut me again »- and even suicidal ideation:« I feel that my family would be better off without me ».

In the presumably safest place, where you can be yourself and even feel at home, there are minors who are not only isolated, without school and without seeing their friends, but who also suffer "serious cases of domestic violence" that, exacerbated by confinement, they paint an "alarming" panorama for those who from the beginning saw it coming.

The ANAR Foundation warned him when we had been locked up for a month: "Between March 23 and 30, there were 270 communications alerting of violent situations, and 173 serious cases in which minors were experiencing some problem inside their own home."

As of today, almost half of ANAR's phone or chat requests for help - if an aggressor takes the minor's cell phone, they will see nothing because the messages disappear almost immediately - are related to domestic violence (47%). Because even if there is no school, bullying is also cyberbullying today , that is, it can continue and, in fact, it does.

The neighbors communicate many serious or emergency and risk situations, thanks to them many cases come to light

Diana Diaz

"There are cases in which you have to go directly to the houses, the Police or Guardia Civil," says Benjamín Ballesteros , director of ANAR and a psychologist by profession, like all the people who are behind this chat and who speak to the police every day. children and also with adults who warn of situations that should not occur. The scenario is not that, with the confinement, a family that runs normally turns into trenches, but that, in those houses where there were problems, they have increased too much.

Diana Díaz, the director of the child help line, explains it, highlighting a particularity of this landscape of violence: “Not only do minors contact us, but neighbors also communicate many serious or emergency and risk situations, thanks to them Many cases come to light ». Normally, notices that something happens to a child to a teenager are warned by teachers or doctors, but now there is no school or much health center. It won't be.

In that space that is the home, sometimes maximum and sometimes minimum, sometimes filling the fridge and other times not so much, physical violence is the highest percentage of the calls for help received (12.7%). They are followed by psychological abuse (6.9%) and cases of sexual abuse (3.5%). More graph: more than 1,441 situations of violence against the minor were reported during the confinement: they were being beaten (46.9%) or humiliating (24%) or touching where it was not lawful (3.6%) .

A situation that also worried the Angel Blau Association from the beginning, founded in 2019 in Barcelona and specialized in the prevention of child sexual abuse from the angle of treatment to pedophiles to prevent pedophilia. On the same dates that ANAR -it was still March- warned that a serious problem was more than foreseeable: But the problem, after having seen the spring pass from the window, has become a huge ball that will require a lot of work to reduce.

“The aggressor now has absolute power and the victim has no way to get out. The abuses are now daily. If the personality of the aggressor is violent but he is out all day, working, when he comes back he has dinner and more or less takes the situation, but now this person is inside the house, with even more frustrations, "describes Ballesteros.

The bag is full: "Great concerns for people, ERTE at work, financial problems, 60 meters for five, rooms without views and invaded vital spaces," he continues. A series of elements that, in some homes, translates into "disproportionate punishments, neglect of care, not giving food, locking him up ...".

In addition, "the usual rules do not apply at home," says Clara Martínez , director of the Santander Chair for Children's Rights at the University of Comillas (ICADE). "Abusers know that they can now do more and that their children cannot complain because their communication skills and channels are impaired. One fact that should place us is that, without confinement, almost 80% of cases of violence against children were already in their homes. For this reason, an organic law is needed to protect children against violence, to focus on detection and to train professionals and promote positive parenting, ”he argues.

In fact, from ANAR, they recall that "the greatest consultation has been on domestic violence for 13 years." Situations of "continued abuse" that leave "emotional consequences in people with few resources yet" . For example, every day, repeatedly, they tell you that "you're worth nothing." "You're worth nothing, you're worth nothing, you're worth nothing," locked in a room, perhaps with a brother and, most likely, with a "mother who suffers gender violence."

"The vast majority of cases that we have had throughout the coronavirus are precisely gender-based violence exerted by the father against the mother and that the children, children, are witnesses, and therefore victims of gender-based violence, too," The director of the foundation completes. The call curve in your organization progresses every day since the alarm state started. Children under the age of 14 can already go out a few hours a day, but the concern persists.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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  • Childhood
  • Coronavirus
  • Lockdown
  • Covid 19
  • Infectious diseases
  • Respiratory diseases
  • Gender violence
  • Sexual abuse
  • Bullying

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