The official statistics do not include whether the subtraction is greater or less between fathers and mothers
MADRID, 23 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Security Forces are aware of an average of one case of parental kidnapping per day per year, a crime for which 434 police proceedings were opened in 2021 after the complaint of the abduction of a minor. Between January and August 2022, 283 cases have been registered, including 14 abroad, according to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior consulted by Europa Press.
The official statistics, which do not discriminate whether the complaint is made by the father or the mother, has been questioned after the Ministry of the Interior stopped including this data in the annual reports published by the National Center for Missing Persons (CNDES).
In this sense, the opposition parties have also criticized favorable treatment by the Executive in cases such as that of Juana Rivas and María Sevilla, two mothers convicted after filing complaints for the abduction of their children and who were later pardoned.
The information from the Criminality Statistical System, prepared with data from the State Security Forces and Bodies, regional and local police, places Catalonia at the head of known events with 53 cases so far in 2022, compared to 74 computed in all of 2021.
Andalusia registers 44 cases so far this year and the Community of Madrid 40, although both communities registered the same data in the twelve months of last year: 67 thefts. The Valencian Community added 46 parental kidnappings in 2021, the Balearic Islands 32, the Canary Islands 25, Galicia 19 and the Basque Country 18. Outside of Spain, the security forces were aware of 26 complaints.
The statistics include the facts known by the police forces framed in article 225 bis of the Penal Code, which punishes the cases in which a parent participates who, “without just cause for it”, removes his minor child. It contemplates a prison sentence of two to four years and special disqualification for the exercise of the right of parental authority for a term of four to ten years.
Abduction is considered the transfer of a minor from his place of residence without the consent of the parent with whom he habitually lives or of the persons or institutions to whom his care or custody was entrusted, as well as other assumptions such as seriously breaching the duty established by judicial resolution. or administrative.
Parental kidnappings frequently create social alarm because of the mediation of a minor. The last relevant case has been the one that occurred on October 13 at the Piedra Monastery in Zaragoza, where the Civil Guard resolved in a few hours the abduction of a 13-month-old baby in a conflict arising from a recent separation of a couple.
The mother was approached in the parking lot of the monastery to remove her son after a violent struggle, leaving her wounded lying on the ground. This led to an immediate complaint that led to the arrest in Parla (Madrid) of the baby’s father, as well as his paternal grandfather and grandmother and a friend, all of them in cahoots — with the knowledge of a lawyer — to offer them a hiding place. . The first two entered preventive detention.
After resolving the case in less than 24 hours and returning the baby to the mother, the chief colonel of the Zaragoza Command, José Antonio Mingorance, admitted to the press that one of the main fears was that the perpetrators of the child’s abduction could flee from Spain.
The Penal Code establishes that when the minor is transferred outside of Spain –or some condition is required for his return– the prison sentence of up to four years is aggravated, it will be imposed in its upper half.
The Ertzaintza this week arrested a woman in Bilbao for stealing a newborn from a hospital posing as a nurse, although in this case it does not appear in the aforementioned statistics as it is an act outside the crime framed in parental kidnapping.
Article 225 bis of the Penal Code also states that it is exempt from punishment if the perpetrator of the crime communicates the place of stay to the other parent or to the person who legally corresponds to their care within the following 24 hours, “with the commitment of immediate return that actually takes finished”.
If the restitution is carried out within 15 days, between six months and two years in prison is imposed, penalties that are also imposed for the ascendants of the minor and relatives of the parent up to the second degree of consanguinity or affinity.
