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An immigration officer who gives passage to a migrant in exchange for sex. A doctor who only prescribes medicines for vulnerable mothers who undress for them in the consultation. Officials who do not cut off the water in certain neighborhoods if any of the affected parties agree to what they ask for. There are two things that experts on sexual corruption agree on. The first is that it is neither an exception nor an anecdote among public officials in any country, not even the most developed ones. And the second is that the magnifying glass should not be placed on women. “The focus has to be on authority,” explains Argentine researcher Dolores Calvo. “A doctor or teacher has to carry out his or her work in an integral manner. Spot. It doesn’t matter that he has a string of women behind him willing to pay with sex, due to the context of vulnerability in which they are.
This same idea is on which a recent study of The Lancet. The report delves into precisely this type of corruption that is so elusive among women’s defenders and corruption experts. Being a practical hinge Between both worlds, this problem becomes a hot potato that passes from hand to hand without anyone addressing it. She is a bad orphan. Although Michele Coleman, gender and anti-corruption researcher and lead author of When sex is required as payment for health care services, believes that it is an increasingly present topic on the agenda, “it is not yet mainstream”. “This is probably because we are completely unaware to what extent it is occurring. Without data to prove it, it is difficult to get policymakers and other key stakeholders to listen and take action,” he says.
The word Sextortion It has often been used to describe the phenomenon of sex and abuse of authority. However, it is only a small part of what sexual corruption encompasses, since sextortion is always explicit extortion. This concept leaves out cases in which, although the sexual act is not carried out, it is intimated or requested directly by an officer. The very low underreporting of complaints from both the Sextortion As with other forms of sexual corruption, it is almost impossible to quantify the practice.
However, according to 2019 Transparency International Global Corruption Barometercollected in the report of The Lancet, one in five Latin Americans knows someone or has been a victim of this type of gender-based violence, which disproportionately affects women. This same study has managed to make an x-ray of the countries where this phenomenon is most pressing: they are mainly Asian and African countries. The only Latin American country they cite is Colombia, due to the interest in analyzing it on the part of the Swedish cooperation – sponsor of the report – and due to the high incidence of these practices.
“Sexual violence and corruption are intertwined in Colombia,” reads another report in which Calvo participated and basis of the most recent study. He dedicates a harsh explanation to how 50 years of armed conflict and patriarchy have harmed Colombian women so much: “The abuse of power and certain types of sexual violence are normalized and there is great impunity in cases of sexual violence. In Colombia, the continuum “Gender and sexual violence permeates all spheres of life, all aspects of society and all the relationships that women experience, both public and private.”
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According to the research, the lack of resources increases vulnerability to being exposed to the practice, for example, in migration situations. “In a context of extreme impunity in access to justice, the lack of power and voice makes it more or less impossible for victims of Sextortion denounce and make visible the violations they have suffered,” he says.
“They are not a priority”
María Fernanda Galicia, director of Mexiro, a feminist organization that has been working on anti-corruption issues for more than five years, is blunt when affirming the same evil in her country: “The gender perspective is not a priority in Mexico. When you ask the main institutions in charge of anti-corruption if they have a differential approach or if they evaluate how it impacts women and LGBTI people differently, they openly tell you that it is not their priority. It seems that international treaties did not recognize them as their own.” For the Mexican, sexual corruption is “completely invisible” and she regrets that it is so underfunded. “Neither the prosecutor’s offices have action protocols, nor are there laws or sentences that serve as background to protect Mexican women,” she says by phone.
Calvo insists that sexual corruption is not exclusive to developing countries: “It happens everywhere, in Sweden and Norway too. And it is even more difficult to tackle it because there is a self-perception that neither gender inequality nor corruption exists.” One of the solutions that experts see is awareness, stopping normalizing these practices, and legislating about them.
But including the crime or specifying it within the category of corruption raises several questions. One of the keys to ensuring that the cure is not worse than the disease is that, unlike the crime of corruption, in which both the briber and the recipient are charged, this has to be treated differently. “When sex is the currency of exchange, it tangentially changes the way you think about the relationship. They cannot be prosecuted because they are victims of sexual abuse,” explains Calvo, who compares this type of abuse with that of prostituted women. “The prostitute does not want to have sex with you, otherwise she would not charge you. It is the same. You cannot talk about consent when there is such unequal power.”
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