A normal Sunday afternoon. At home. In family. The mother, at one point, receives a call: “Have you seen this? Do you know if your son has done something?”, are the words you hear on the other end of the phone. “I just hang up I’m going to look for the child. I became upset and began to ask him what he had done, where those photos came from.“.
This is the story given by the mother of one of the children involved in the ‘nude’ case of girls with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Almendralejo, which broke out last Sunday, the 17th, after the gynecologist, popularizer and mother of one of the affected girls, Miriam Al Adib, revealed the case on her social networks and El Periódico de Extremadura, from the Prensa Ibérica group, published it in its digital edition that same day. A week has passed since the event came to the national – and even international – media spotlight and revealed the lack of control in the use of technologies by young people and also of sexual-affective education of the kids: “Our son is not a criminal, nor a monster, but he has played with a gun. The boy is very manipulable, they are at an age where they want to fit in, be one more, like the others, and he was not aware that the game and the joke were not a game or a joke,” says the father, who does not stop of thinking that “just a few days before” he had left him without parental control on his cell phone: “As he had a time limit, he insisted that I take it off, just for that afternoon,” he recalls. “At the damn time this child picked up the cell phone,” the mother intervenes.
“They are at an age where they want to fit in, be one more, like the others, and they were not aware that the game and the joke were not a game or a joke”
These parents, whose identities this newspaper will not reveal to preserve the privacy of the minor, They do not want to justify or exonerate their son’s actions, but they do want to make visible the suffering that the case has also meant for the other families.: “This has been a lesson for everyone: for the boys, for the girls and for the parents,” he says. “The boy is very sorry. I know this as a mother. He gets up with bags under his eyes, his eyes swollen from crying. Our house is not the same since that Sunday. We have been without sleeping, without eating. I have gone to walk for hours and hours, but among the vineyards, because I didn’t even want to see people. And I still have a lot of anger inside, we have shed tears like fists“says the mother. “It is very hard to enter the police station with your son and see how they read his rights,” she says.
Awareness
These parents have also tried to disconnect these days: “I have stopped going on Facebook because, of course, in the end you are curious to see what people are saying and I have read comments such as that the children’s families will be very calm. Those people have not been to my house, they do not know what we are going through,” says the mother. “I didn’t want to put it on TV either, because it’s been on everywhere,” says the father. “This has been new to us, if this case had come out somewhere else, like other things that happen, we are seeing it with the child and we warn him, but what would we know that this existed?“she adds.
“We do warn them that if something strange appears on the Internet, don’t click, don’t get involved in adult things, but even in the normal games they have on their mobile phone, they have little windows with things about nudity. It’s that you enter a page and they ask you ‘are you 18?’ You mark yes and that’s it, there should be some other type of control. The mobile issue is very dangerous, it is a very good tool but it can also be a tragedy“says the father.
“Even in the football games they have on their cell phones, they have little windows with things about nudity. You go on a page and they ask you ‘are you 18?’ Mark yes and that’s it”
These parents remember that they have spoken with their son about sexual-affective issues but admit that it should be an issue in which the educational community and society also intervene: “We have talked about what is normal, We warn him about things, to be aware, but sometimes boys are ahead of us, both in technology and in sex.. We would never have seen this coming. Well yes, if at school they talked about these things, just as they have to use new technologies for others, it would be positive. Of course this entire digital world needs stronger control,” they admit.
Mobile banned
At the moment, at home, the boy is banned from using his cell phone: “He He is punished, with his cell phone and other things, and his punishment will continue. Just as we have already punished him other times if he has brought any suspense, but this is much worse, I wish he had brought all suspense and not this story“, laments the mother. “And what we have also done is remove him from all those groups, who were with children he didn’t even know at all, friends of friends of friends, he doesn’t even know who they are exactly. We have told him: ‘you, with your usual friends,’ “she explains.
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He and she are still assimilating everything that has happened, and so is their son, but above all They hope that a common learning will emerge from the case so that nothing similar happens again.: “Neither in Almendralejo nor anywhere.”
The actions of the National Police in the case are already in the hands of the Juvenile Prosecutor’s Office. Up to fifteen boys have been identified by the same and statements have been collected from thirty victims at the Police Station.