The child-to-parent violence and the measure of internment. Special mention to the “benefit release”

Abstract

Nowadays, society’s concern regarding one particular criminal phenomenon committed by minors is growing. This phenomenon is known under a variety of labels very different from each other such as “parents abuse syndrome”, “tyrannical children”, “little dictators”, “ascendant violence”, “inverted violence”, or “child-to-parent violence”. Indeed, this phenomenon is a type of domestic violence constituted by those psychological, physical and/or economical aggressions, and exercised intentionally and repeatedly by under age children towards their parents or towards those other adults who occupy their place. With the present paper, we pretend to contribute to research on this phenomenon from a legal perspective. In order to accomplish this, we perform an approximation to the concept of child-to-parent violence, affirming that it has been the great forgotten in the research about domestic violence developed in our country. On the other hand, we analyze its incidence, which has allowed us to check the increase that is experimenting this problematic in Spain. Furthermore, we observe that the internment is one of the measures enforced with more frequency in these cases, which is why that we approached its study. Taking into consideration that one of the behaviors carried out by minors who assault their parents is the economic abuse and how, many times, they suffer from some type of addiction (to toxic substances, to new technologies, to shopping…), we propose the convenience of modifying the “benefit of release” that they perceive at the end of the measure of internment and we offer some alternatives to its current regulation.

Keywords

• Menores de edad
• Violencia filio parental
• Padres maltratados
• Violencia doméstica
• Internamiento
• Prestación por excarcelación