Background: Due to the expected increase in child abuse during the period of COVID-19 confinement, it is essential that social researchers and other professionals work together very quickly to provide alternatives that protect children. To respond to this extremely urgent demand, evidence-based actions are presented that are being carried out in nine schools in the autonomous communities of Valencia and Murcia, Spain, during the confinement with the goal of “opening doors” to foster supportive relationships and a safe environment to prevent child abuse. Methods: The research was conducted through the inclusion of teachers who are implementing these actions in dialogue with the researchers to define the study design, analysis, and discussion of the results. Results: Knowledge regarding six evidence-based actions is provided: (1) dialogic workspaces, (2) dialogic gatherings, (3) class assemblies, (4) dialogic pedagogical gatherings with teachers, (5) mixed committees, and (6) dynamisation of social networks with preventive messages and the creation of a sense of community, which are being implemented virtually.

The first research conducted on violence against women in the university context in Spain reveals that 62% of the students know of or have experienced situations of this kind within the university institutions, but only 13% identify these situations in the first place. Two main interrelated aspects arise from the data analysis: not identifying and acknowledging violent situations, and the lack of reporting them. Policies and actions developed by Spanish universities need to be grounded in two goals: intransigence toward any kind of violence against women, and bystander intervention, support, and solidarity with the victims and with the people supporting the victims.

Gender-based violence cannot be overcome without a wide social support for the victims, which is dramatically limited by the violence against those who take an active stand in favor of survivors. The struggle against sexual violence requires simultaneous actions to protect both the direct victims of sexual harassment and the victims of second order sexual harassment -SOSH-. Although the first definition of SOSH comes from 1990 (Dziech & Weiner, 1990) there has been a lack a research on the issue, despite its social and scientific importance. The objective of this article is two-fold: a) to provide a concept of SOSH useful to present developments for science and society, through identifying specific situations of persons and those with whom they work and have suffered SOSH; b) to disclose the main contributions to face these situations through several social aspects on legal, university, citizenship, media and political perspectives. Using a qualitative methodology we conclude by highlighting the need for developing joint actions of the whole society to identify and legislate the SOSH, while empowering survivors and the ones who support them, in an attempt of eradicating gender-based violence.

The scientific literature has identified an attraction toward models of masculinity marked by abuse and domination in teenagers' sexual and affective relationships. Given this reality, greater insight is needed on the mechanisms that lead young people to choose this type of relationship. In theory, different authors argue that as a result of the disassociation between goodness and attractiveness a profound crisis of meaning is found. A study conducted with the Critical Communicative Methodology, particularly, through the use of communicative data collection techniques has led to gather evidences of this crisis, particularly how it is interplayed by the opposition between a language of ethics versus a language of desire. The use of communicative daily life stories and communicative focus groups allowed not only to identify this separation but also those elements that contribute to overcome it.

When faced with situations of gender-based violence, one becomes exposed to risk in giving support to the victim (van Reemst, Fischer, & WC Zwirs, 2015, Hamby, Weber, Grych, & Banyard, 2016; Liebst, Heinskou & Ejbye-Ernst, 2018). This form of violence, second order of sexual harassment (SOSH), occurs when people who support victims of gender-based violence experience violence themselves because of this positioning (Vidu et al., 2017; Flecha, 2021). There is little research on the subject. Through a quantitative study carried out with 1541 Spaniards over 18 years of age, we provide, for the first time, quantitative evidence of the incidence of SOSH in the responses of people who have been aware of a situation of gender-based violence. Our results show that SOSH is an important obstacle; 40% of people who did not offer help in the case of gender-based violence did not do so for reasons that correspond to SOSH.We concluded that the fear of suffering SOSH can condition people’s reactions in the environment, thereby limiting the possibility of female victims of violence receiving help.