By Edmund Rouge
Photo by: Victoria Page
45 years ago, on May 18, 8-year-old girl Araceli Cabrera Crespo disappeared while returning from school in Vitória, Espírito Santo. Police found her body six days later, discovering that she was the victim of kidnapping, rape and murder. Later, after five years of prolonged and irregular judicial proceedings, the men who raped her were acquitted.
In 2000, the National Congress declared May 18th as “National Day to Combat Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents” in memory of Araceli. In 2018, 18 years of mobilization were completed in the month of May to combat these practices that violate the rights of children and adolescents. However, to this day, Araceli's violent death remains unpunished.
Abuse and sexual exploitation of children and adolescents (or ESCA) continue to be real problems today. In cases of ESCA, although complaints and reports are hampered by the various and ambiguous definitions, the practice can be defined as the engagement of a person in a position of power in a form of sexual coercion of a child or adolescent (people under the age of 18 years old), with or without any type of exchange. Forms of ESCA may include, among other practices: human trafficking for sexual purposes, sex tourism, child pornography, child marriage, and transactional sex.
It is estimated that ESCA is the second most common form of violence committed against children between 10 and 14 years old in Brazil. Between 2012 and 2016, there were at least 175 thousand cases of ESCA in the country, representing four cases per hour.
Even more worrying data indicates that it is possible that this phenomenon is perpetuated by beliefs that naturalize relationships between older men and girls, which ends up making it even more difficult to identify these practices as relationships of violence and exploitation. Research carried out by Promundo in 2009 shows that there is a tendency to naturalize ESCA relationships and blame victims in many cases. 41% of men interviewed in Rio de Janeiro and 46% of women considered the act as “teenage prostitution” and not as sexual exploitation. 48% of men reported that dating girls between the ages of 12 and 17 made them feel younger.
It is in this context that Promundo sought to carry out a more in-depth research initiative on the relationship between ESCA in Brazil and so-called social norms. It is understood that social norms, or informal rules of behavior, dictate what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in a specific cultural context, playing a fundamental role in perpetuating practices, such as female genital mutilation and child marriage. People who subject their own daughters to such acts may disagree with the practice itself, for example, but they are so influenced by the expectations of how the community they are part of behaves, as well as what that community expects of them, that they end up conforming. and following these standards.
Unfortunately, there is little literature on the relationship between social norms and ESCA in the world. In Brazil, it is practically non-existent. The study “Ready for what?: A Qualitative Study on the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents in Urban Communities in Rio de Janeiro” seeks to fill an important gap in research on ESCA in Brazil. Carried out within the scope of the LINEA project (Learning Initiative on Norms, Exploitation and Abuse, in English, or Learning Initiative on Norms, Exploitation and Abuse in Portuguese) of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the study was carried out in three low-lying communities income in the city of Rio de Janeiro: Cidade de Deus, Complexo da Maré, and Rocinha.
Focus groups and individual interviews were conducted with 130 participants from the three communities, with questions developed specifically to identify the presence of two central types of social norms: descriptive norms, which revolve around what people in a given group think others do; and injunctive norms, regarding what people in a group think others approve and disapprove of. Identifying the presence of these norms about ESCA in these communities can be essential for the development of effective strategies to prevent and combat the practice.
The preliminary results of the study confirm data from previous Promundo research, showing that girls involved in ESCA relationships are often blamed and/or seen as manipulative, and that the involvement of men in this practice is considered normal, as a way to reinforce and affirm your masculinity. In many cases, situations that are clearly exploratory – typically those involving a type of exchange – are considered normal by the groups interviewed.
It is through these cultural mechanisms that ESCA remains a serious problem for Brazil to this day. It is exactly this type of naturalization of the practice and blaming of victims that allows the case of the girl Araceli Cabrera Crespo to remain unpunished, after 45 years.
Although the National Day to Combat Abuse and Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents is a positive step, the Brazilian government needs to make a greater effort to address the issue. It is necessary to promote and conduct research to provide a basis for the creation and implementation of public policies that strengthen the system for guaranteeing the rights of children and adolescents in addressing and confronting the toxic norms that naturalize this practice.
“Ready for what?: A Qualitative Study on the Sexual Exploitation of Children and Adolescents in Urban Communities in Rio de Janeiro” is scheduled for release in the second half of 2018. The qualitative study is the first result of the LINEA research, which is now in data collection phase for the quantitative study.
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