Rape and pregnancy of girls aged up to 13 years in Brazil: characteristics and implications in health during gestation, delivery and childbirth.

Rayone Moreira Costa Veloso Souto,Cheila Marina De Lima,Denise Lopes Porto,Laura Augusta Barufaldi,Carlos Cezar Flores Vidotti,Marta Maria Alves Da Silva,Mariana Gonçalves De Freitas,Isabella Vitral Pinto

doi:10.1590/1413-81232017229.13312017

Rayone Moreira Costa Veloso Souto, Cheila Marina De Lima + Show 6 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1590/1413-81232017229.13312017

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Abstract

Sexual violence against children and adolescents is a serious threat to the rights and full health of this age group. This study aims to describe the characteristics of mothers aged up to 13, and analyze the profile of cases of notified rape in this age range and repercussions of this violence during pregnancy and childbirth. It is a comparative study of the characteristics of gestation and childbirth of girls aged up to 13 who have had children, without or with notification of rape, in the Violence & Accidents Vigilance (VIVA) System of the Brazilian Case Registry Database (Sistema de Informação de Agravos de Notificação - SINAN). A significant percentage (67.5%) of the girls aged up to 13 with children were of the black race/color category. There was repeated violence in 58.2% of cases. The notified rape victims have a higher percentage of birth by cesarean section, late onset and a lower number of prenatal consultations; and their babies had lower birthweight and lower 1-minute Apgar scores than mothers without rape notification. Rape of children and adolescents is an important risk factor that has repercussions during pregnancy, and complications in delivery and childbirth.

Highlights

MethodViolence against children and adolescents is a grave threat to the human rights and the health of this age group[1,2,3]
Females are more susceptible to situations of sexual violence, due to the inequalities in gender relationships and society’s patriarchal values[4], which have individual and social consequences[4,5,6]
It is estimated that every year there are 527,000 cases of attempted rape or rape in Brazil, of which only 10% are reported to the police[9]

Summary

Introduction

Violence against children and adolescents is a grave threat to the human rights and the health of this age group[1,2,3]. In cases of rape of children or adolescents, a crime against sexual dignity and liberty[9] which includes sexual intercourse[10] or other acts of libido, the consequences are even more serious, able to result in undesired pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, injuries to sexual organs, and damage to mental health, potentially generating long-term and/or inter-generational effects[4,5,9,11]. In Brazil, the data of the Brazilian Public Safety Annual reported 45,460 cases of rape in 2015, including rapes of women and of men[12]. In 2015, the Viva/Sinan survey reported 162,575 cases of violence against women, of which total 17,871 (10.99%) were notifications of rape, and of these 6,706 (37.52%) were in girls between the age of 0 and 1213

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