REPORTING OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN BRAZIL- Brazilian Journal in Health Promotion, Vol. 28, No. 3, 2015, pp. 327-336

Sexual violence against women is an issue that females face all around the world. This issue takes place all around the world, however, the females in developing countries have less access to legal resources, and the women usually don’t speak up because there is a cultural stigma around “rape”. Developing countries have patriarchal system placed in state institutions and the governments role is limited in supporting victims.

A huge issue of gang rape has been taking place in India. On 16^th December, 2012 a women were gang raped and killed in the buss (Roychowdhury, 2013). This news got a lot of media attention. What is interesting is the perception of the men and people on this gang rape. Some people said that it was the girls fault for being gang raped as a decent girl shouldn’t roam around at 9 at night or a girl should be at house doing house work not roaming around at night doing the “wrong” things, wearing the “wrong clothes”.

In the mist of the issues around sexual violence and reporting of these violence’s the study by Moreira et,al. elaborated on the issues of sexual violence in Brazil. It aimed to view cases that were reported through Notifiable Diseases Information System. The study analyzed the information on reporting of sexual violence from 2009 to 2013.  The results suggest that 21,871 cases were reported in this period. The northern regions had higher sexual violence being reported in 2013. The study looked at multifaceted factors such as education, race, and involvement of alcohol. Interestingly most often (60.6%) sexual assault was taken place at a female’s house by a person the know.

The domestic space should be a place of refugee and comfort however it may be a place of fear. It is ironic that some people say that females should stay home so they are not raped but what if you are raped at home ? Then whose at fault is ?

Roychowdhury, P. (2013). "The Delhi Gang Rape": The Making of International Causes. Feminist Studies, 39(1), 282-292. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/23719317