In Spain, Hundreds of Male Students Caught Abusing Young Girls
In Spain, there has been a huge uproar following the disturbing video showing more than 100 male students yelling sexist epithets at an all-female college. The event happened on Sunday at the Madrid Elias Ahuja Hall of Residence.
The video, which Spanish politician Rita Maestre posted on Twitter, showed a large number of windows suddenly opening, exposing young men hurling derogatory and sexist epithets at female students in a nearby building.
Additionally, a student can be seen in the video shouting: “Whores, come out of your holes, bunnies. You are a load of nymphomaniac whores.”
Then, in a planned action, students from the Colegio Mayor Elas Ahuja building across the street pulled open their curtains and began yelling and making animal noises.
Ms. Maestre criticised the students’ behaviour in her caption on Twitter. She wrote in Spanish, “Then they will wonder why we are terrified of the street.”
The incident, according to Spain’s equality minister Irene Montero, is the “clearest proof” that sexual consent education is necessary. “That way all the boys and girls and teenagers in our country will learn that treating people right is right and that treating them wrong is wrong,” she said. “That way they’ll learn about the culture of consent so that we can stop reinforcing the culture of rape and sexual terror that makes women into sexual objects,” she added, as per The Guardian.
College student Elias Ahuja described the behaviour as “unacceptable” in an Instagram post. The public display was deemed “incomprehensible and inadmissible in society” by the university. The officials also stated that they will punish the offending students, apologise in front of the entire student body, and make sure everyone took the required classes on gender equality.
This incident occurs while Spain’s coalition government works to reduce violence against women and advance gender equality. Congress passed a measure in May called as the “Only yes means yes law,” emphasising the significance of consent to make it simpler for victims of sexual assault to take legal action against their attackers.
In a research conducted last year, it was shown that one in five young Spanish men did not accept the existence of gender violence and thought it was a “ideological construct.”
A distressing video from a number of years ago that appears to be of the Elas Ahuja home has also been making the rounds. In it, students are seen singing the words “Sieg Heil” while appearing to do the Nazi salute.
