An average of three cases of sexual abuse make up the daily agenda of judicial hearings in Bariloche. In 2022, there were around 232 files for this type of crime in the Third Circumscription (which also includes Engineer Jacobacci and El Bolsón); the previous year 220 were started.
When the Victim Attention Office (Ofavi) was formed in Bariloche, its four members prepared a report that yielded shocking data: sexual crimes once morest children and adults led the list of causes that they addressed in the Andean city in the period to date. the second half of 2018 and all of 2019. “It even exceeded the crime of gender violence that we thought was greater. We were surprised at the time”, they recognized from that office. The statistics were not updated, they indicated, due to lack of time.
Around 2018, the Ofavi team began receiving calls from social workers, psychologists and educational psychologists from the Etap (Technical Team for Pedagogical Support), proposing sexual abuse situations that were discussed in schools.
The law that establishes the dictation of Comprehensive Sexual Education (ESI) in schools was approved in 2006, but its real application arrived in Río Negro in 2017, many years later. “Today there are many more boys and girls who are aware of what is right and what is wrong. At that point, disclosure issues regarding sexual assaults increased. We talk regarding schools but also regarding health clinics. Many times the professionals call us and tell us that a child started psychotherapeutic treatment and told that he was being sexually assaulted by someone”, the professionals agreed.
Chief Prosecutor Martín Lozada referred to “a cultural climate that enables and encourages reporting of this type of crime”. “This cultural climate makes the State prepared to receive and address these complaints. It is the product of the demands of certain groups that assist the victims and also of the instructions given by international organizations to Argentina”, he affirmed.
Information is power for both children, adolescents and women. This is how the members of Ofavi understand it. “Without the groups that promote the perspective of rights or gender, surely there would be many fewer complaints. Many social workers and psychologists ask if they are facing a criminal situation or not. But usually, It is the teachers who receive the first request for help, the first instance of disclosure of a sexual assault”, they explain and add: “It is hard because it implies a breakdown of the family nucleus at some point and is crossed by many fears that maintain the secret”.
Why so much delay in the actual application of the law? For the social resistance to work on these issues in both public and private schools. “My son goes to school to learn and not to talk regarding sex” was -and usually is- a recurring phrase.
At Ofavi they are forceful: “This fact that it is a law is not minor because it obliges to provide information”.
Many complaints of child sexual abuse come from family members, but also from teachers and school administrators. “We have had cases of teachers who find out because the boy tells the school what happened to him. This is transferred to the Etap and the Etap tries to get closer to the family. If the family refuses to make the complaint, the members of the Etap, the teacher or the directors advance in justice”, they detailed.
The school should always accompany. You have an obligation. But the specialists explain that “communication with families is always prioritized because the child spends most of his life there. What must be guaranteed before a complaint is the cessation of risk. Sometimes, when the family does not accompany, does not believe or cannot face this statement, Senaf intervenes because other measures must be taken”.
Denature
On the other hand, more complaints of sexual assaults are received within married couples who, until some time ago, were naturalized.
Lozada stressed that, in recent decades, “the normalization or naturalization of certain types of violence or asymmetries that women have historically suffered has been put into crisis”.
“This naturalizing of sexual assault within marriage is something that has a significant impact on women when they see it. They break imaginary. There is physical and psychological violence, but sexual violence is the most invisible at the moment”, they agree in Ofavi.
The impact of visibility and awareness by organizations and groups is substantial. But also the responsibility of the state in punishing those who commit this type of crime. In most cases there are convictions.
According to Lozada, this way of observing violence “brings regarding legal transformations because we realize the urgency with which it is necessary to operate to reduce the margins of impunity in some cases. Or to deter potential attackers. The penalty is a message not only addressed to the perpetrator but to the rest of the community.”
Beyond the penalty, those who are convicted of these types of crimes are included in a Single Registry of Sexual Offenders.
“The latest reform of the Criminal Execution Law provides for the victim to intervene in the process of executing the sentence of the aggressor. So, for example, it is notified regarding certain decisions of the judges. You can give an opinion in relation to temporary releases for the convicted person, work outings or regarding certain benefits for the convicted person. The victim must be informed“Lozada said.
resocialize
In cases of convictions for gender violence, Río Negro advances by imitating the Spanish model with the challenge of resocializing the aggressor. Bariloche already started a pilot test with a group, in March. These are scheduled meetings that last three months.
There are cases of sexual abuse of men, but, they say, they are the least.
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