BRAZIL: From Dolls to the Brothels of Copacabana

By Fabiana Frayssinet Reprint | | Print |

Fabiana Frayssinet

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 5 1996 (IPS) - A mother rescuing her daughter from the clutches of whoremongers sounds like the plot for a high Victorian drama, but 14 year-old Vanessa lived through just such an experience in the Copacabana area of this city — in 1996.

This girl is just one victim of the sexual exploitation of children gripping Brazil, making it a world-leader in this form of abuse.

“He was called Fabiano Robertti and he was a very nice man. He gave me clothes, perfumes. He didn’t even let me go out because he said the streets were very dangerous,” Vanessa told IPS.

She had met Robertti on the beach, and he had set her up in prostitution.

The girl was interviewed in the Plaza de Vila Norma, an abject neighbourhood on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, after Vanessa’s older brother and his friends asked for the interview to take place away from their home as they did not want a reporter there.

“They are involved in drug trafficking and those things,” said Vanessa’s mother. “This is a drug distribution point and they don’t want the house to be recognised,” she said openly.

Like Vanessa, a further 500,000 children and adolescents aged between 12 and 18 have been trapped in the prostitution network as a result of looking for better living conditions and escaping from an insecure home life.

“The vast majority are from the lower social class and have a history of family conflict stemming from domestic violence or poor economic conditions, which means these children look for other ways to survive,” children’s judge Siro Darlan told IPS.

Prostitution is not exclusively restricted to girls either. At least 10 percent of the children prostituted are boys, said Darlan.

Research by the Centre of Reference, Studies and Action on Children and Adolescents (CECRIA) indicated that the worst sexual exploitation of children takes place in parts of northern Brazil. In some cases the sexual services of minors are even listed on bar menus.

Rio de Janeiro comes second in the survey, with child prostitution linked unrelentingly to ‘sex tourism,’ a phenomenon which reaches its second highest level worldwide in Brazil.

The Brazilian justice minister, Nelson Jobim has attempted to deal with the issue by sending Congress a proposal to increase prison sentences for those profiting from child prostitution.

The bill was announced during a meeting on the exploitation of children and adolescents in the Americas held in Brazilia from April 16 to 19 with funding from the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

However, Darlan, who rescued 135 children from Rio de Janeiro brothels in six months, does not think police and legal pressure alone is enough to solve the problem.

“The true culprits are, in the first place, the families, who do not give their children enough direction, then come the public powers, which did not create prevention mechanisms in the areas of education and psychological help for these children,” he said.

Udo Block, UNICEF representative in Brazil, said the battle against child prostitution starts with true respect for the Statute of the Child and Adolescent, legislation approved several years ago to protect this vulnerable section of the population.

“It has very clear clauses which state that no child, no adolescent, and no human being can be prostituted,” he said.

UNICEF has proposed better coordination between governments, non governmental organisations and civil society to confront the problem in an integral manner.