Hello. Good morning. It is now 11 hours and 47 minutes. Today’s bulletin starts drawing your attention to a worrying reality. Teenagers between 12 and 17 years old are the main victims of sexual abuse in Pernambuco. We analyze data about police reports. Most of the time the aggressor of the young victims are at the place where they should find protection: on their own houses.
This woman was abused by her neighbor between the ages of 7 and 10. Then, her own brother did the same thing with her between the ages of 11 and 20. Now, she is 22 years old, but she passed part of her childhood and all her adolescence been victim of violence.
“My neighbor used to manipulate me all the time. He used to tell me to not speak about what he did with nobody. He threatened me saying he was my father’s friend. My brother did the same. He tried to convince me that the relationship between siblings was ordinary, normal and something that could benefit me. He used to tell me that he’ll give me the life I always dreamed about. It was more than an obsession. He wanted to have a marital relationship with me”, she says, without being identified.
Two years ago, she finally was able to report the abuses she was suffering.
“I decided to search for a support network. I had all the assistance for the city service and the police. After this, the Justice took protective measures against my brother. This ended the aggressions and the abuse episodes”, she told us.
Since 2015, the police received 18,413 denounces of rape in Pernambuco, according with data we had access. In 12,811 cases, the victim was less than 18 years old. There were 7,051 reports where the victim was in the age group between 12 and 17 years old. In another 5,760 cases the victim was between zero and 11 years old.
Just to August 31st of 2022, the police received 1,466 denounces of sexual abuse. There were 1,018 cases where the victim was less than 18 years old. In 574 episodes, the age group was between 12 and 17 years old. Another 444 reports had victims between zero and 11 years old.
Among kids and teenagers, the majority of the victims are girls. This year, the police had 893 cases in which the victims were female and 123 cases where they were males. In two cases, the gender of the minor wasn’t informed to the authorities.
This psychologist remembers that many cases are not taken to the police and the official numbers are underreported. “Researchers already discovered that, in the whole country, we have 527,000 cases of rape or attemptive of rape every year in average. Only 10% of these cases are reported to the police. So, it is important to denounce. The silence protects only the aggressor. The silence never protects the victim”, says Walkíria Alves.
To support the victims of abuse, Pernambuco has 37 reference centers to help women who face domestic or family violence. Two of these centers are in the city of Cabo de Santo Agostinho. One of them is the Maria Purcina Center, which offers social, legal and psychological assistance.
“Soon the woman arrives here, she is supported by an interdisciplinary team with a psychologist, a social worker and a lawyer. All of them are female, which is very important information. We try as much as we can to offer her a supportive environment”, says the psychologist Samira Ferreira.
If you want to help a possible victim, pay attention to how they behave. “In childhood, we have to realize if the children change the way it behaves, if it gets more sad, more irritated or more restless. It’s also important to look if the kid is depressed or if it’s started to get bad grades at school. When we are talking about a teenager, someone who is already able to recognise the abuse, we can have other problems. This teenager could fantasize that it has a relationship with the abuser. It could develop a dissociative disorder, get angry, depressed or hurt itself”, explains Alves.
The woman who was able to trump her fear and call the police says the seek for help can be liberated and save lives. “It was a difficult time and a difficult decision, but it is possible to have a happy life after your are found support to denounce”, she says.
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