The monster of child sexual violence in Mexico; cases increase 594% in a decade

"Please dad God let this be a dream. Let this not be happening." Claudia realized that something terrible was happening when she saw the WhatsApp messages about a possible case of sexual abuse in her son's school.

She spoke with a psychologist friend and what she told her made her even more uneasy. Her baby was showing all the red flags for being a victim . When Claudia's son was 3 years old, he was sexually assaulted in a kindergarten in Mexico City by the physical education teacher. " It was the first months at school. I went to file the complaint immediately."

The boy lost control of his sphincters and no longer wanted to go to kindergarten . A minor who was in daycare from the age of 40. Those were the first signs.

In the narration of the facts in front of the authority, Claudia heard for the first time from her own son what happened to him. Her world collapsed only to face another problem that continues to this day, access to justice.

The almost 600 percent increase in sexual assaults against minors in the decade from 2010 to 2020 are devastating figures from the Ministry of Health.

There are other relevant data. For example, that women are attacked more. For every male child molested, there are 10 sexually violated girls or adolescent women . It is estimated that the black figure can reach more than 90 percent of the cases that are never reported.

Currently, social organizations such as Aldeas Infantiles, Equifonía or the Ombudsman for Children's Rights point out that the lack of inter-institutional coordination, the limited budget for the Protection Offices and the lack of specialization of the public ministries to attend with a childhood perspective, they form the first cluster of actions that trigger child sexual violence.

Also, say the experts, not recognizing children as subjects of law, the refusal of prosecutors to request early evidence, corruption in the courts, and the lack of comprehensive sexuality education in schools feed the monster. of child sexual violence in Mexico.

The breeding ground

Child sexual assaults do not have the same definition across the country. There are at least 16 types in the penal codes. Some terms refer to the same thing, such as pederasty and rape, others are as ambiguous as sexual abuse, which is not the same as rape, according to legal definitions.

There is really no minor sexual assault, and all would have to be pursued with the best interests of the child in mind. Most sexual offenses against minors are non-violent. They involve gambling and persuasion, taking advantage of the victim's age. And this is one of the biggest problems that children face in accessing justice.

According to the testimonies collected for this investigation, when the authorities determined that the aggression was not serious enough, then they showed negligence and disinterest.

Viridiana, from Jalisco, fought for three years to bring her son's aggressor before a judge. The public ministry considered that the aggression was not serious enough because there was no penetration. The crime was classified as sexual abuse.

According to the open investigation folders or preliminary investigations initiated for sexual crimes against minors in 2018, child sexual abuse was the most reported crime in the entire country , with 7,330 cases.

Marcela Martínez Roaro, an educator in comprehensive sexual education, recalls a case of abuse. A grandfather "played", or rather assaulted his granddaughter with touching. When the girl told her mother, she told her that the grandfather had played like that with all of them, from the daughters to the granddaughters, and that there was no problem.

Within families and in the community, ideas persist that downplay the problem, warns Araceli González of Equifonía, an organization that accompanies victims of child sexual violence in Veracruz.

The data speaks for itself. Between 2010 and 2020, the Ministry of Health registered 31,703 injuries due to sexual violence against people between 0 and 17 years of age, according to a response by Transparency from the Executive Secretary of the National System for the Protection of Children and Adolescents.

On average, 3,170 medical cases were recorded each year. This is equivalent to 9 daily sexual assaults against infants and adolescents in Mexico. But a closer look shows that, from 2010 to 2020, there was a 594 percent increase in registrations.

While in 2010 the Ministry of Health attended 792 cases; In 2020, there were 5,497 minors and adolescents injured by sexual violence. As for the sex of the victim, in the same period of 10 years , 2,855 male children and adolescents were assaulted; and 28 thousand 848 girls and adolescent women.

This means that for every boy treated medically for a sexual assault there were 10 girls assaulted.

The data indicates that adolescents were attacked more, with 23 thousand 353 cases; in comparison with 5 thousand 495 girls attended from 0 to 10 years old, between 2010 and 2020. The average age, in the case of adolescents, was 16 years old , with 4 thousand 756 medical cases for sexual injuries.

Regarding girls, at age 10 they were mostly sexually violated , with 691 records. For their part, children accumulated 1,790 medical cases, compared to 1,655 among male adolescents.

In that period from 2010 to 2020, the average age among men was 6 years, with 268 medical cases for sexual injuries. According to this information, five states concentrated just over half of the injuries due to sexual violence against children: State of Mexico, Jalisco, Chihuahua, Nuevo León and Guanajuato.

The other 27 entities accounted for less than 50 percent of cases during those 10 years. In this year, the Ministry of Health registers 4,554 injuries due to sexual violence until August 2021, against 315 men; and 4 thousand 239 girls and adolescents.

For the first time there is a record of a 12-year-old intersex person attacked in Michoacán. The average age so far in 2021, in the case of men is 7 and in women, 15 years. Regarding infants, the average age with more aggressions remained at 10 years of age , as in the past decade.

So far this year, the states that concentrate more than half of the sexual assaults attended by the Ministry of Health against infants and adolescents are the State of Mexico with 906, Chihuahua with 567, Veracruz with 320, Coahuila with 269 and Jalisco, also with 269.

Men, the biggest aggressors

The majority of sexual offenders of children and adolescents are men. An example is Mexico City. Between January 2020 and July 2021, 3,109 people were accused of sexual crimes against children under 12 years of age . Of these, 2,990 were men.

Of those almost 3 thousand cases that correspond to alleged sexual aggressors of infants in Mexico City, 2 thousand 944 committed the crime.

In other words, during a period of 18 months in the country's capital, 96.1 percent of the alleged sexual aggressors of children and adolescents were men who carried out their aggression, according to the local Superior Court of Justice.

It is common for them to be close people such as father, uncles, brothers, cousins, grandparents, sentimental partner or family friends; teachers, employers or religious ministers.

Andrea not only faced the authorities, both Education and Justice, to go after the aggressor. She was also subjected to mistreatment by the community and her partner.

Juan Martín Pérez explains that these kinds of attitudes are common, because the macho logic itself causes the aggression to be minimized. They question what happened or, in the best of cases, they decide to convince themselves that it wasn't such a big deal.

Another example. In Jalisco, between 2017 and August 2021, of 664 final sentences on sexual crimes against minors, 537 of those sentenced were men, that is, 80.8%. That figure could be higher because in 97 sentences there is no record of the sex of the accused person.

Of the universe of male sexual aggressors of girls and boys in Jalisco during that period, 458 obtained a conviction.

For her part, the president of the National Institute for Women (INMUJERES), Nadine Gazman points out that child sexual violence shows us how the macho culture and the patriarchal system tell men and young people that they have rights over women's bodies. , girls and boys.

However, for Araceli González from Equifonía, a civil organization that promoted the two gender alerts in Veracruz, addressing a problem as complex as child sexual violence with a concept as broad as "patriarchy" is reductionist , but without hesitation she points out that , "ultimately there is a choice of these men. It is important to study what is motivating these aggressors, these predators."

The poor delivery of justice

Estefania is another mother of a victim of child sexual violence. She lives in the State of Mexico but the attack on her daughter occurred in a preschool in Mexico City.

Estefanía corroborated, beyond any suspicion, that her daughter had been sexually assaulted. She, along with her husband, went to denounce the Public Ministry Agency Specialized in Sexual Crimes of Mexico City in Colonia Vallejo.

They waited six hours with her daughter, but with no luck because there was no public defender available. When they finally succeeded, it was her husband who declared at dawn. The agent of the Public Ministry did not record in the record everything that he narrated; "that it was not important, that it was not relevant, that for what" , they did not want to give him a copy of his statement either.

One of the biggest problems victims face is the partial or total disappearance of their files. Andrea comments that, of 15 folders that were opened for a multiple case of abuse and rape in the primary school that her daughter attended, the Querétaro State Attorney General's Office lost 14.

Through the intervention of the Human Rights Ombudsman of Querétaro, they managed to find one, after three months of having denounced it. The folder that corresponded to the aggression against her daughter was one of the perdidizas. "The public defender assigned to us was very arrogant. She almost didn't approach us," she recalls. Making the file perishable implies that the investigation stops.

Only the tenacity of the people affected has allowed the cases to continue , with all that that implies . Re-victimization, re-declaring, the economic and emotional expense and the wait of years seeking justice.

In the case of Viridiana de Jalisco, three years passed before the aggressor was notified to go to trial. Her son told the same story five times and she seven, because the files were constantly “lost”.

In her last statement, Viridiana was asked to provide the weight and height of the alleged aggressor, how much she earned, the company she worked for, her work hours, address and photos of the home. She was also asked to present two witnesses to support her story. "The psychologist told me: 'in this type of case it is very rare that there is a witness' ", Viridiana recalls again with surprise.

The torture of denouncing

"Well, did they put it in you or not?" This is how Viridiana narrated how her eleven-year-old son was questioned when she had to testify for the third time before the Public Ministry. The teenager has known his attacker since he was born. When he was seven years old he began to bother him . Four years passed before his mother found out.

In the case of Estefanía from Mexico City, during the period called psychological experts, a representative of the Prosecutor's Office asked the expert "was the girl raped or not?" , the four-year-old girl ran out to hug her mother.

pregnant girls

"Many times sexual violence begins at a very early age, but it is identified with pregnancy," says Araceli González from Equifonía. The pregnancy of girls as young as 9 years old is one of the strongest indicators that shows another part of the problem.

In 2020, 9 thousand 876 infants and adolescents, between the ages of ten and fourteen, were mothers according to the National Population Council (CONAPO). From 1991 to 2020, that statistic grew 62 percent. While in 91 there were 6,086 pregnancies in people under 15 years of age, in 2020, 9,876 were registered.

At these ages consent is not valid. Civil organizations point out that more than 90 percent of girl pregnancies are not the product of a relationship between equals, they are due to pederasty. That is, the infants were raped. Forcing girls into motherhood is considered to be tantamount to torture, says Equifonía.

His life is also in danger. "Girls have died due to pregnancy as a result of sexual assault," warns Araceli González of Equifonía.

Deaths due to pregnancy, childbirth or the puerperium in adolescents between the ages of 15 and 17 occupy the sixth place in reasons of death , as recorded in the document Impact of the pandemic on girls and boys from the Ministry of the Interior, published in August 2021.

sexual assaults in schools

The first institutional contact in childhood with the structure of the State is the school. The school represents a great opportunity to identify and deal with possible cases of sexual violence.

However, as the Children's Rights Ombudsman has documented, in its report It's a Secret. Child sexual exploitation in schools, which was published in May 2021, "very young girls and boys, narrate having suffered unimaginable violence in preschool, and in public and private primary schools. Assaulted in groups by multiple adults, subjected to a combination of sexual, physical and psychological violence.

Despite the relevance of the issue, the authorities have little information. The Ministry of Public Education (SEP) responded to a Transparency request that only had data from Mexico City.

There, from 2010 and so far in 2021, 516 sexual assaults perpetrated by teachers against children and adolescents were recorded. In that period in Mexico City, 227 complaints were in secondary school, 188 in primary school, 84 in preschool and 6 in high school. In 11 cases there is no record of educational level.

From 2010 to 2019, there was a 66 percent increase in sexual assaults in Mexico City schools, with 15 complaints in 2010, and 25 in 2019. Even in 2020, when most of the school year It was at home, the SEP has registered 15 sexual assaults committed by teachers in Mexico City.

So far in 2021 they have 9 complaints. In Querétaro, Andrea went to the state education authority about the teacher who sexually assaulted her daughter.

When wanting to open an administrative file, they made him sign a document that literally says: " Whoever, having the legal obligation to behave truthfully in an act before the authority, does so falsely , will be sentenced from three months to three years in prison and up to fifty days fine. She took it as intimidation.

The Protection Offices

In Mexico, according to the General Law on the Rights of Children and Adolescents, the Protection Attorneys are the administrative authorities that can intervene and identify violations of children's rights, including sexual assaults; as well as providing accompaniment, advice or legal representation. It is important not to confuse them with the Public Prosecutor's Offices.

The Protection Offices are made up of a multidisciplinary team in social work, psychology, law and medicine. The group is empowered to issue protective measures that are binding on all authorities. However, this administrative body has two problems , in the light of the experts. The first is that it operates within the structure of the DIF Systems.

The structure that mandates the three orders of the Mexican State to guarantee children's rights is not the DIF, it is the SIPINNA, which at the federal level has been without a holder since February of this year.

The second problem of the Protection Offices is the lack of budget. In 2019, UNICEF Mexico published the document Prosecutors for the Protection of Children and Adolescents. Report on costing and proposals for its strengthening. They point out that the annual resource for all the Attorney General's Offices to operate at the national level is 2,487 million pesos . On average, they only have 27 percent. Any person in Mexico who is a victim of child sexual violence could go to a Protection Agency, but hardly anyone knows them.

UNICEF Mexico explains that investing in the protection of infants and adolescents would generate more returns than any public infrastructure project. "If the Protection Offices had the budget, the annual investment would have a return of more than 200 percent ," explains Karla Gallo of UNICEF.

Austerity that should not circumvent the protection of children's rights . UNICEF compares the annual budget of 2,487 million pesos, with the cost of the Estela de Luz, which was 1,304 million pesos.

The investment of resources for the Protection Attorneys, in the optimal scenario, would represent 0.013 percent of the Gross Domestic Product or 0.5 percent of the Federation's Expenditure Budget , comments the UNICEF Mexico official.

In the federal budget for 2022, the DIF received an increase of just over 15 percent compared to last year. It remains to be seen if some increase will be assigned to the Protection Offices of this resource.

Comprehensive sexuality education

One of the most effective strategies to prevent sexual violence against children and adolescents is comprehensive sexual education.

The taboo or the cultural aversion to calling things by their name, clearly and scientifically with regard to sexuality, leaves girls and boys in a greater degree of defenselessness.

"Because of the mortifying culture, where sexuality is bad, dirty and should not be exercised. Sexuality is lived from guilt and that also sustains violence ," warns Francisco Contreras, who works in Veracruz with men who exercise violence.

The current Natural Sciences book and the Primary Civics book "have elements. They meet a percentage of the indicators, but not to the depth that is desired," warns the head of Democracy and Sexuality.

But for the former president of the Mexican Federation of Sexual Education and Sexology, Marcela Martínez Roaro, these contents do not represent comprehensive sexuality education , "information is one thing and education is another," she questions.

The UN recommends starting in preschool and keeping the subject until the last year of high school. One of the topics during the study years should be Violence and how to stay safe.

In the community where she was a teacher for two years, she remembers that the different forms of child sexual violence were normalized , such as harassment, touching, pedophilia and incest. The teacher identified a pattern in the behavior of girls and boys who "shrug their shoulders and bow their heads when they talk about their bodies."

Some students from Olivares related sexuality issues to some kind of aggression, "because they saw it, or because it happened to them." To implement a comprehensive sexuality education program, "political will" is required.

The federal Secretary of Education, Delfina Gómez, declined the various interview requests for this investigation.

Girls and boys continue to suffer in silence

The mental health of sexually assaulted infants is severely compromised. Anxiety, problems establishing interpersonal relationships, suicidal thoughts, low self-esteem, among other emotional and health challenges.

" The cost of violence against a boy or a girl throughout his life is estimated at 1.8 million pesos per person ," says Karla Gallo of UNICEF Mexico. Some specialists point out that sexual crimes against girls and boys have such an impact on their lives, that it is like killing a part of their being.

The case of Viridiana's son, who received support from the State Human Rights Commission of Jalisco, ended after three years with a fifteen-day detention sentence for the aggressor, while they performed a psychological examination.

The sexual assault was not considered serious because there was no penetration, despite the fact that the assaults occurred repeatedly over a period of 4 years.

Although he was found guilty, the judge noted that the assailant seemed genuinely remorseful. He also took into account his approach to religion. In addition to the psychological study, she set a figure for reparation of the damage and sentenced a restraining order for one year.

Claudia's case in Mexico City continues. Until today there is only one person detained , but it is presumed that he is part of a network. The Children's Rights Ombudsman works with her.

Estefania from the State of Mexico has still not obtained justice. "I already made up my mind that this is going to last for years. You have to fight for justice in Mexico, you have to fight it. It is not granted for being a victim ," accuses the mother of the 4-year-old girl attacked in a kindergarten. Mexico City.

Regarding the case of multiple abuse and rape in the Querétaro school , the State Human Rights Commission determined that both the state Secretary of Education, which acted through the Unit of Services for Basic Education of the State of Querétaro (USEBEQ), and the State Attorney's Office were negligent.

Of 15 complaints filed for different forms of child sexual violence, the aggressor was only recorded and sentenced for one case. He led his process in freedom. " She got an eight-year sentence and never paid compensation for the damage," says Andrea, the mother of one of the attacked girls.

After 2 and a half years, a decentralized judge from Mexico City granted him freedom. "She said that they violated her rights (due process)", for having leaked his name to the press.

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