O grito silencioso : a violência sexual contra crianças e adolescentes em Sergipe no período de 2021 a 2024

Abstract

This research chose sexual violence against children and adolescents as its object of study, examining its historical context and the reality of the prevalence of cases in Sergipe. Because it is a complex and multifaceted issue, sexual violence was analyzed from two central subgroups: sexual abuse and sexual exploitation. It was presumed that the high incidence of these cases was related to underreporting and the consequent silencing of victims. To support the analysis, the historical-dialectical materialist method was adopted, which made it possible to understand the social formation of childhood and adolescence as subjects of rights. The general objective was to analyze the historical and social construction of the recognition of children and adolescents as subjects of rights. In an articulated manner, the following specific objectives were established: (1) to present the typology of sexual violence, considering its structural, cultural, and social determinants; (2) to analyze the advances and challenges in the implementation of protection and confrontation policies; and (3) to identify the policies for the protection of children and adolescents in Sergipe, verifying, through statistical data, the prevalence of sexual violence. To achieve the proposed objectives, the research adopted the historicaldialectical materialist method (Netto, 2011), enabling the understanding of sexual violence as a social object linked to the structural and cultural determinations of capitalism. The approach was qualitative-quantitative, articulating numerical data, and interpretative analyses. As methodological procedures, documentary research was used—involving legislation, plans, official and normative reports, such as the ECA (Statute of the Child and Adolescent), the PNEVSCA (National Plan for the Prevention and Combat of Sexual Violence Against Children and Adolescents), as well as documents from UNICEF, CONANDA (National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents), and FBSP (Brazilian Forum for the Protection of Children and Adolescents)—aiming at obtaining and systematizing data. Complementarily, bibliographic research was conducted based on authors in the field of Social Work, as well as contemporary studies on policies for the protection and confrontation of sexual violence against children and adolescents.