Grooming is a serious problem that occurs within our society, often made invisible and which is more common than people believe.
Jacqueline Paul, final year student at the Law School of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, obtained a research grant to study the impact of grooming on the constitution of digital citizenship, as well as how the recent Mica Ortega Law acts in the prevention of this violence against the sexual integrity of children. and adolescence.
Digital devices, platforms and environments became active spaces in the socialization of children and adolescents. They are a bridge and stage for the exercise of their rights, such as playing, communicating, educating, informing and participating, among others. But there they may also encounter some risks and situations that affect their integrity, such as grooming, which is any action by which an adult contacts a child or adolescent through any data transmission technology to attack their sexual integrity. It is often carried out using a false identity and creating a bond of trust, which can be difficult to recognize as violence at first. The aggressor can be someone known from the inner circle or a stranger who does not hide her identity.
“Grooming means violence against the sexual integrity of childhood and adolescence. The penal code classifies it as a crime that has a prison sentence of six months to four years, and that is also often intertwined with other crimes, such as misnamed child pornography, child sexual abuse or rape. Paul.
In the project, called “Grooming and digital citizenship”, the law student worked with the premise of building a comprehensive and interdisciplinary perspective that guarantees the participation of children and adolescents in the formation process for the appropriation of these digital rights. . “I am focusing on the study of public policies in Rosario, although it also has a national correlation. Since 2020, at the national level, we have Law 27.590, also called the Mica Ortega Law, which focuses on prevention and awareness about grooming and cyberbullying for boys, girls and adolescents.
Micaela Ortega was 12 years old when Jonathan Luna, an adult man who pretended to be a child, met her on Facebook, tricked her, and then murdered her. This event occurred in April 2016. Finally, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and is imprisoned for that reason.
The law at the national level was sanctioned in 2020 and in 2022 its regulatory decree was issued, which allowed the creation of the National Grooming Prevention and Awareness Program, which operates in the National Secretariat of Children, Adolescence and Family of the Nation (SENAF). ), and which in turn serves as the enforcement authority. “Since 2013, grooming has been a criminal offense and in 2023, Santa Fe was the first province to adhere to the Mica Ortega law. Now work is being done on its regulation within the province.”
During the research project, Jacqueline conducted a survey of a large number of people, mostly women, to learn some guiding guidelines. The results showed that almost 60 percent of those surveyed received sexual images without consent at some point. “It is a problem that has been going on for a long time, which necessarily has a gender perspective because in more than 90 percent of the cases the victims are women, and it also has a childhood perspective, because there is a special vulnerability that deserves extra attention. of the State, the community, and responsible adults.”
It should be noted that everyone is at risk of receiving images without prior authorization or viewing private images without consent. However, the difference is that childhood and adolescence also include the vulnerability of being developing people. “This is something that shows that grooming is violence against sexual integrity and that it brings about other violence, almost obligatorily,” he added.
Consolidating digital citizenship
Jacqueline, the first generation in her family to be able to study a university degree, highlighted the need to address this issue from a perspective that cuts across violence in digital environments. “We must move away from the punitive role a little and promote a perspective more of prevention and promotion of digital rights. If we are able as a society to train ourselves in this perspective, we will build a very powerful prevention tool. For this reason, the participation of children and adolescents in the construction of public policies, based on their own experiences in digital environments, seems very important to me.”
In that sense, he focused on the concept of digital citizenship since it is very important to know the rights and duties that each individual has within the digital environment. “It must be taken into account that all the rights we have in physical spaces are also valid in digital environments.”
In this way, childhood and adolescence must be the main protagonists when building prevention tools. “We need to be able to look at what tools you find to be the most effective for your peers. There is a series produced by Infobae, called Safe Mode, that talks about the different risks that exist in digital environments, which is very interesting because they themselves participate and explore different concepts," he explained and added: "Reality indicates that if Ask a teenager if they know what grooming is, in most cases the answer is positive. That is, they know the risks that it brings and what consequences there may be, but they lack data to complete that concept. It is necessary to be able to work on that and make different prevention methods viral.”
A crucial aspect of the research is to analyze the comprehensive participation of all the actors involved in this problem. “The responsibility is shared between the State, the adults in charge of caring for children and adolescents, as well as the community as a whole. The role of promoting public policies that address digital citizenship and, therefore, contribute to the prevention of violence against sexual integrity is fundamental. Sometimes adults distance themselves from the problem due to their lack of knowledge about new technologies, which can lead to grooming situations occurring behind their backs. Therefore, encouraging greater active involvement is key to addressing this problem.”
Paul highlighted that a real articulation between the actors involved is necessary, because it is not that grooming is a problem that has to be under the supervision of a single person in charge, but that the conditions have to be met so that the detection and prevention are efficient.
As part of the investigation, he conducted interviews with participants from the team of the Ministry of Justice of the Nation, corresponding to line 147, which receives calls to report or seek advice on violations of rights. “They told me that the majority who communicated were teenagers and that when they called they had in common the fear of telling their peers and adults. And many of these fears correspond to parents getting upset and it being something that complicates their daily lives. These reactions to being victims of grooming are something to take into account in the framework of public policies. We cannot generalize, there is no single childhood and policies must always be directed in view of the fact that there are intercultural childhoods and that they have other knowledge and experiences."
In addition, he conducted interviews with members of Clic Derechos of the SENAF, a prosecutor from the Public Prosecutor's Office who deals with crimes involving sexual integrity, and collaborators of the Faro Digital initiative, a group dedicated to the analysis, study and promotion of citizenship. in digital territories.”There are many social actors who are working on this problem. It is important to have CSE concepts very present, such as how gender roles or masculinity play," he explained and added: "There is a large amount of research on childhood and adolescence, with people very committed to the subject. Within what is digital citizenship, we work with violence in digital environments, where one is grooming but we must also pay attention to the violence perpetuated in cyberbullying and the dissemination of non-consensual intimate images of boys, girls and adolescents.
Journalist: Gonzalo J. García