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This Thursday afternoon the Catalan police will hold a high level operational meeting to address the emergency caused by the sexual assaults that have taken place over recent months in the city of Badalona, just north-east of the Catalan capital, on the Maresme coast. The aim of the meeting is to be able to take preventive action, if possible, in terms of police initiatives. The heads of the Northern Metropolitan region, commissioners Sergi Pla and Montse Estruch, will take part in the summit, along with other police leaders, such as the spokesperson, inspector Montserrat Escudé, also a specialist in the fight against this type of violence.

Until now, the Mossos d'Esquadra police have acted reactively, in response to complaints - such as the assault that occurred on Saturday in a vacant lot, when nearby residents phoned 112, or in the four other recent cases of sexual attacks involving underage alleged perpetrators as well as victims, when the young woman assaulted was brave enough to take a complaint to a police station - to investigate the facts and, if possible, identify and arrest the perpetrators, but now the Catalan police want to take on a preventive role and that is why the meeting is to be held this Thursday. The meeting also coincides with an extraordinary plenary meeting of the acting Badalona city council and a meeting between the council and the Catalan government, in which ministerial representatives from health, equality and feminism, social rights and education will take part, in addition to the Mossos police.

Thursday's meeting take place is part of the Mossos' plan to combat sexual violence and coincides with the launch, throughout Catalonia, of the Sexual Violence Council and the creation of new specialised anti-sexual assault units which are intended to find, at regional and, specifically, local scale - in this case, in and around the neighbourhood of Sant Roc de Badalona - actions that will enable police to go more deeply into the underlying issues with the police tools that the Mossos d'Esquadra has at its disposal.

The Badalona phenomenon: many common denominators

The case of Badalona is very specific. There have been five almost-identical sexual assaults - involving groups of mostly-young teenage males and a female victim of the same age group - but, as far as we have been able to learn from Catalan police sources, none of them involve the same perpetrators. Nevertheless, the modus operandi of the aggressors is almost identical in each case: one of the aggressors contacts the victim via Instagram and starts a sexual relationship, which in the most recent case, led to a gang rape, and in another case, to group pressure and sexual assault by several males. One of the locations for the earlier assaults was the toilets in the city's Magic shopping mall.    

The vacant lot where the latest sexual assault took place, this Saturday, in Badalona / ElCaso.cat

Beyond the age of the victims and aggressors - few are over 17 and only one, for now, has exceeded the legal age of 18 -  police say that the common denominators they have are that all are Spanish nationals and residents of the socially disadvantaged neighbourhood of Sant Roc de Badalona. 

Complaints of sexual violence have increased by almost 20% in Catalonia in the first four months of 2023 compared to the same period last year. More than 12% of the perpetrators and 38% of the victims are minors. It is estimated that, of the total number of attacks, 4% are group attacks - by more than one person - but the rise in sexual assaults in Badalona, bearing in mind that these are isolated events but taking place in the same environment, and with the same modus operandi, has also set off all the alarms for the Catalan police to reformulate prevention in the ground zero, the area of Sant Roc de Badalona.

Measures beyond police action

The Mossos do not hide from the fact that it will take more than police intervention, prevention and reaction to reverse this grave problem for the city of Badalona and its residents . The Catalan police have also announced that if other more transversal measures can come out of this Thursday's meeting, these will be transferred to the relevant actors.

It must be remembered that some of the minors who have allegedly participated in these sexual assaults are under 14 years old, which is the age limit under which they cannpt be imputed or arrested. The solution is not easy, but it can only be addressed if the problem is faced head on.