Every day in Spain, six girls under 13 are sexually assaulted | Company

Six girls under 13 are sexually assaulted every day in Spain; 12 rapes are committed every 24 hours against women of all ages and nine men are arrested for rape every 24 hours; minors between the ages of 14 and 17 commit one in ten penetrative sexual assaults; and four out of ten victims are under 18 years old. These are figures which come from the latest report from the Ministry of the Interior on crimes against sexual freedom, published this Monday with data from 2024, the latest available. In total, 22,846 copies were produced, or 66% more than in 2018, the date on which this annual report began to be published.

Each year this statistic reflects not only trends but also an upward trend in which it will never be possible to know whether what is increasing is the violence itself, the complaints, both problems, or in what proportion each is increasing. Interior has been repeating this for several years. “The data does not reflect all the acts committed. This gap is mainly due to the hidden number of crimes (unreported acts) and the lack of recognition by certain victims that the behaviors suffered constitute criminal offenses of a sexual nature,” they wrote this year in the report.

According to the European Survey on Gender Violence published in 2024 by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), “only 13.9% of victims of physical or sexual violence report the incidents to the police,” adds the Interior report.

With this hidden bag in mind, here are the keys to the latest data on sexual violence known in Spain, a country that the European Institute for Gender Equality ranks fourth among the most egalitarian countries:

What crimes are committed. The majority correspond to sexual assaults, there are 13,674 of the 22,846 known incidents, or 59.85%; In second place are assaults with penetration, 5,222, which represent 22.86% of the total. Other crime typologies are all below 5% of the global figure, with sexual violence against children, still technically and socially called “child pornography”, being the highest in this lower range: there were 913 known crimes last year, or 4%.

The upward trend, the report states, “has not been maintained uniformly” for all crimes, there are “slight declines for some”. Among them the groomingcontacts through technology with minors under 16 for sexual purposes, which increased from 739 in 2023 to 554 last year; those linked to prostitution, from 328 to 252, respectively; or the distribution or digital broadcast of content, from 91 to 64.

Multiple attacks also decreased (552 last year compared to 617 the year before, not including those investigated by Ertzaintza), which, for the moment, the report says, is a change that “cannot be determined whether it will be consolidated” and whether it “responds to a stable trend.”

Who commits them? Last year, 14,375 people were arrested for these crimes, the vast majority men, or 93.13%; notably from 18 to 30 years old (29.32%), and from 31 to 40 years old (20.95%). In recent years, minors have represented nearly one in 10 sex offenders; in 2024 there would be 1,206, or 8.39%; and they represent one in ten committing penetrative assaults, not including those under the age of 14, who cannot be held responsible and therefore do not appear in these statistics.

And there are two nuances. It is only in the known facts relating to prostitution that the proportion of men and women is reversed: more women (172) were arrested than men (137). And in terms of age, it is in the 14 to 17 age group that “the highest percentage of women detained or investigated for crimes against sexual freedom” is concentrated, notes the report. They are 12.2%, mainly in the crimes of exhibitionism and harassment, even if the figures, in total, are tiny: four girls and nine boys arrested for harassment, and eight girls and ten boys for exhibitionism.

Against whom they are perpetrated. The majority of victims are women, 85.69% of the 22,778 recorded, and four out of ten are minors; because although the greatest diversity of victimizations occurs among those between 18 and 30 years old (30.54%), those between 0 and 13 years old (18.42%), those between 14 and 15 years old (12.61%), and those between 16 and 17 years old (10.21%) account for 41.24% of all crimes, 38.71% of non-penetrative sexual assault victims, and the 31.23% of victims of assault by penetration.

For certain types of crimes, however, the percentages of men and women are not so high: while they represent more than 85% of victims of sexual assaults with and without penetration, harassment and those related to prostitution, male victims increase in crimes such as corruption of minors (42.50%), sexual provocation (referring to the action of selling, disseminating or exposing pornographic material directly to minors or people with disabilities who require special protection), with a 36.63%; exhibitionism (30.12%); he grooming (26.80%) or sexual violence against children ―“child pornography”―, with 26.61%; crimes for which generally the number of minors rises to the point of being in the majority.

Something that occurs due to “the legal configuration of this type of criminal offenses, designed specifically for the protection of this group” and which also includes “people with disabilities who require special protection”, including those over 18, the Interior report specifies.

The relationship between victims and perpetrators. Most victimizations fall into the category of “unknown relationship” between the victim and the perpetrator; In 74.56% of cases, “the link between the victim and the aggressor could not be determined”, which, notes the report, “reflects both the real presence of aggressors unknown to the victim and the limits of the recording in the identification” of this link.

After this majority group, follow victimizations in the family, which reach 5.72%; among them against sons and daughters, 2.11%, and in other family relationships, 3.13%. In relationships with a partner or ex-partner, these crimes represent 5%, between friends 3.86%, in the professional or commercial environment 2.16% and at school 1.32%, among others.

Nationalities. As for the victims, 73.03% are of Spanish nationality and 26.97% are of foreign nationality. “Among the latter, 55.49% come from the American continent, followed by victimizations originating from other countries of the European Union (20.13%). As for the countries with the highest concentration of victimizations, Colombia (4.96%) and Morocco (2.31%) stand out.”

Concerning the authors, the report establishes that 60.76% of those detained or investigated are of Spanish nationality and 39.24% of foreign nationality. Among the latter, “the most frequent are Moroccans (7.65%) and Colombians (4.70%). America is the continent with the greatest number of people of foreign nationality detained or investigated for crimes against sexual freedom, with 16.08%, followed by Africa, which concentrates 12.72%.”

However, these percentages vary according to age groups. Among the authors, for example, the proportion of foreigners among minors falls to 25.1%; while among 18-30 year olds, it rises to almost half (48.61%); and the range from 31 to 40 is “the one where the highest percentage of people of foreign nationality is concentrated, 51.03%”. And the lowest is among those aged 65 or over (14.09%).

Here, the Interior report emphasizes that “it is always advisable to carefully examine the effect that the age pyramid produces on crime, which leads to an over-representation of certain social groups because they are at ages more at risk of crime”.

And as for victims, these proportions evolve in the same way with age. Among minors, the percentage of foreign women hovers around 17%, increases in the group from 18 to 30 to 32.81%, and to 41.45% among those between 31 and 40 years old, which, says the report, “highlights the particular vulnerability of foreign women in certain contexts, linked to social, economic and integration factors, rather than to nationality itself”.

Telephone 016 assists victims of gender-based violence, their families and those around them 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in 53 different languages. The number is not listed on the phone bill, but the call should be deleted from the device. You can also contact by email 016-online@igualdad.gob.es and by WhatsApp at the number 600 000 016. Minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10. If it is an emergency situation, you can call 112 or the telephone numbers of the National Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062). And if you can’t call, you can use the ALERTCOPS application, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.