RIO DE JANEIRO — The attacks have stunned this city. In one, an
assailant held a gun to the head of a 30-year-old woman while raping her in
front of passengers on a bus as the driver proceeded down a main avenue. In
another, a 14-year-old girl from a hillside slum was raped on one of Rio’s most
famous stretches of beach.
In yet another case, men abducted and raped a working-class woman in a
transit van as it wended through densely populated areas. The police failed to
investigate, and a week later the same men raped a 21-year-old American student
in the same van, pummeling her face and beating her male companion with a metal
bar.
“Unfortunately, it had to happen to her before anyone would help me,”
said the Brazilian woman raped in the transit van. “I was like, ‘Could this
have been avoided if they had paid attention to my case?’ ”
A recent wave of rapes in Rio — some captured on video cameras — have
cast a spotlight on the unresolved contradictions of a nation that is coming of
age as a world power. Brazil has a woman as president, a woman as a powerful
police commander and a woman as the head of its national oil company — and yet,
it was not until an American was raped that the authorities got fully involved
and arrested suspects in the case.
A wave of rapes in Brazil has cast a spotlight on the conflicted
attitudes toward women in the country. A women's-only subway car in Rio de
Janeiro.
Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
In some ways, Brazil’s experience echoes recent events in India and
Egypt, where horrific attacks have prompted outrage and soul searching,
revealing deep fissures in each society. In Brazil, it has unleashed a debate
about whether the authorities are more concerned about defending the privileged
and Rio’s international image than about protecting women at large.
In India, the recent death of a student, who was gang-raped as her male
companion was beaten on a bus under similar circumstances, has highlighted a
prevailing view that women, no matter how much progress they make, are still fair
game, unprotected by an ineffectual government.
And in Egypt, where the collapse of the old police state has led to an
outbreak of sexual assaults in Tahrir Square in Cairo, some newly emboldened
conservative Islamists publicly blame the women, saying they put themselves in
harm’s way.
It is perhaps paradoxical that the issue has popped up so forcefully in
Brazil, a country that has gone to great lengths to protect and promote women’s
rights. There are special cars for women to ride on trains to avoid being
groped, as in parts of India. There are special police stations here staffed
largely by women. And there is a general view that holds women as equal, fully
capable of excelling in even the most powerful posts.
The New York Times
“We’re living a schizophrenic situation, in which important advances
have been made in women reaching positions of influence in our society,” said
Rogéria Peixinho, a director of the Brazilian Women’s Network, a rights group
here. “At the same time, the situation for many women who are poor remains
atrocious.”
Indeed, the public discussion about the string of sexual assaults in
Rio was relatively muted before the American student was attacked in late March
after boarding a transit van in Copacabana, a beachfront district frequented by
tourists. The reason, some experts argue, was that the earlier victims were
largely poor or working class, reflecting one of Brazil’s enduring struggles:
extreme class divisions in society.
“For a large part of the political leadership, these rapes only get to
be a concern if they affect someone rich or damage Brazil’s image abroad,” said
Malu Fontes, a newspaper columnist who criticized the lack of attention paid to
rapes of poor women in Rio, which is preparing to hold the 2014 World Cup and
the 2016 Summer Olympics.
“We like to believe in Brazil that we live in a peaceful, happy place,
when the truth of our existence is far more complicated,” she said. “It’s like
we’re Narcissus gazing into a pool of sewage.”
One woman was raped in front of passengers on a public bus that
traveled along a main road in Rio. Other sexual assaults have occurred on
smaller private vans that are common in the city.
Mauricio Lima for The New York Times
Rio’s public security officials acknowledge that they have faced a
sharp increase in the number of reported rape cases, which surged 24 percent
last year to 1,972 in the city. But they argue that the increase has taken
place nationally, reflecting a change in legislation in 2009 to broaden the
definition of rape to include oral and anal penetration, as well as efforts to
make it easier for women to file rape complaints.
Brazil has made strides in its efforts to reduce violence against
women. As early as the 1980s, it helped pioneer the creation of police stations
with female officers to help victims register domestic violence, sexual
assaults and other gender-related crimes. And in 2006, legislation was enacted
nationwide intended to establish special courts for prosecuting acts of
domestic violence with stricter sentences.
But while Rio’s authorities have succeeded in lowering rates of certain
violent crimes, like homicides, the recent rapes have focused new attention on
the dangers of riding Rio’s buses and vans, an essential part of life for many
residents.
In the days after the rape of the American student, Mayor Eduardo Paes
announced a ban on transit vans, which are privately owned and sometimes
operating without permits, in Rio’s prosperous South Zone. The ban prompted
criticism that the mayor was giving priority to the safety of wealthy seaside
areas over grittier parts of the city where the vans are still allowed to
operate.
A spokesman for Mr. Paes countered that the ban was not related to the
rapes, but part of a broader public transportation plan under consideration for
months. The spokesman added that the mayor had also forbidden vans to tint
their windows, in an effort to prevent crimes within the vehicles.
Officials in the state of Rio de Janeiro said that rapes in buses, vans
or subway cars accounted for less than 1 percent of all cases in recent years.
“There are no signs of an epidemic of rapes within public transportation,” said
Pedro Dantas, a spokesman for Rio’s public safety department.
Still, the string of cases in Rio, including the rape of a 12-year-old
girl on a bus last year, are part of a larger pattern of attacks and harassment
aboard transit vehicles in several cities, including two rapes this month
around the capital, Brasília. In the city of Curitiba, lawmakers are reviewing
a bill that would introduce women’s-only buses.
Eleonora Menicucci, Brazil’s minister for women’s affairs, noted that
no nation was immune to shocking crimes against women, pointing to the
abduction and long imprisonment of three women in Cleveland.
But she said Brazil had worked hard to encourage women to come forward
to report rapes, and she contended that perpetrators would be prosecuted
regardless of the backgrounds of the assailants or the victims.
She cited a
case in the city of Queimadas, where six men from relatively privileged
circumstances were swiftly arrested, tried and convicted last year in the gang
rape of five women, two of whom were killed after recognizing their assailants.
But critics remain skeptical, arguing that the main reason the rape of
the 14-year-old girl from a slum drew public attention was that it occurred on
the beach in front of Leblon, one of Rio’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
Sérgio Cabral, Rio’s governor, called the assault on the American
student an “atrocity” but emphasized that he did not expect it to affect the
image of Rio, which he was said was experiencing a “forceful moment with big
events and investments.”
SCRIPTURES
DEUTERONOMY 22: 25But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field,
and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her
shall die: 26But unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing; there is in the damsel
no sin worthy of death: for as when a man riseth against his neighbour, and
slayeth him, even so is this matter: 27For he found her in the field, and the
betrothed damsel cried, and there was none to save her.
LEVITICUS 19: 29Do not prostitute thy daughter, to cause her to be a
whore; lest the land fall to whoredom, and the land become full of wickedness.
ISAIAH 13: 12I will make a man more precious than fine gold; even a man
than the golden wedge of Ophir.
ISAIAH 4: 1And in that day seven women shall take hold of one man,
saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be
called by thy name, to take away our reproach.
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