Mexico is the first country in the world in sexual abuse of minors, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Of these violations, 90% perpetrated against girls occur inside homes and in the family environment, two of the spaces where girls should be safer and more protected. This has been denounced by the director of the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence against Women (Conavim), Fabiola Alanís, during the presentation, this Wednesday, of the government figures against sexist violence.
The head of Conavim has pointed out in the press conference, headed by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, that the low reporting rate, or what is the same, the huge black number of cases that are not reported in this type of crime , has to do with “fear, mistrust in the authorities and punishment [vergüenza]”And has asked for the cooperation and collaboration of the judges in the fight against impunity, which is 99% in this type of violation. The same impunity that leaves victims unprotected before the courts. “There are issues that bother us as a society and that we do not dare to denounce,” said Alanís when discussing the issue.
Out of every 1,000 cases of sexual abuse committed against minors in the country, only 100 are reported and of these, only 10% reach a judge. Of these, only 1% receive a conviction, according to OECD figures. To this must be added that the crime of rape prescribes between five and 10 years in many of the country’s criminal codes, when according to specialists on the subject, a victim of sexual abuse as a minor may take decades to report. That is why entities such as Mexico City decided to change their legislation this year and declare pederasty to be inalienable and extend the deadlines for prosecution.
Each year 5.4 million children and adolescents are victims of sexual abuse in Mexico. According to the children’s organization Aldeas Infantiles, six out of 10 of these rapes occur at home and in 60% of the cases the aggressor is a relative or belongs to the close circle of the family. That is, the rapists are uncles, cousins, friends or neighbors.
Alanís has taken advantage of the use of the floor to state that only so far this year, Conavim has treated 594 victims and survivors of sexist violence, of which more than half have been treated for sexual and physical violence. “We have been moved and outraged by the child femicides, some of the victims between one and two years old, in two cases of sexual assault at the hands of the father and an uncle,” said the director.
Just a week earlier, the agency to eradicate violence against women had focused on the State of Michoacán. The entity with the most child feminicides in the country. Of the total of these murders so far this year, 17% correspond to women under 17 years of age. The national average according to the Executive Secretariat of the National Public Security System is between 7% and 9%, but Michoacán reached a worrying 17% in 2021.
During the press conference, Alanís detailed that 22 out of 32 states – in one of every four municipalities in the country – the Alert for Gender Violence has been activated and has recognized that the violence that women in Mexico experience every day is “serious and undeniable ”. “The alerts serve for federal, state and municipal authorities to do what we have to do to improve the lives and safety of women,” said Alanís. As part of that strategy against violence, the head of Conavim pointed out that 121.3 million pesos are being allocated for the prevention of femicide and attention to the backwardness of thousands of investigation folders in the prosecutor’s offices throughout the country.
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