Prostitution: Brazil Justice Sees No Crime in Occasional Sex with Minor

Brazil's Superior Justice Tribunal, an appellate court, in Mato Grosso do Sul state, after studying a concrete case of sexual abuse in that Brazilian midwestern state, ruled that the decision of the Justice Tribunal had been correct when it rejected the accusation that two men had committed the crime of sexual exploitation of minors.

The higher court concluded that there was no crime since the customers had used only occasionally the services of minor prostitutes. 

At the end, the defendants were convicted not for having engaged in sex with the teenager girls but for having photographed the minors in the nude and in pornographic poses.

The johns had hired three minor girls  who were professional prostitutes and were offering their wares at a bus stop. They were taken to a motel. As payment, two of them got 80 reais (US$ 44) each, and the third one received 60  reais (US$ 33).

In acquitting the defendants from the crime of sexual exploitation of minors the lower court took into the account the fact that the teenagers were already "recognized prostitutes."

The higher court confirmed the opinion noting that the crime of subjecting a child or a teenager to prostitution does not include the occasional customer. The relation of such client shouldn't, according to the juridical premise, be framed as sex exploitation.

The neighboring state of Mato Grosso right now is talking about P.S.R., a 14-year-old who left home to school in Cuiabá and then vanished. A week later she called the mother to tell her hat she was working in a night-club in Várzea Grande while being watched closely by her captors. She was able to run away a few days later.

Back home she told police that she had been forced by a woman to have sexual relations with men over 40 as well as to use drug and drink wine and beer every day, while being forbidden to get out on the street. She said that there were other minors in the place, including a 13-year-old girl.

The night-club, also known as Tolerance House is located in the Capão Grande neighborhood. The madam responsible for the child prostitution in the place has been identified only as Aninha (Little Ann). She hasn't been arrested however.

The president of the State Committee on the Fight Against Sex Abuse of Children and Teenagers, José Rodrigues Rocha Júnior, presented worrisome data. According to him, 5 to 6 children are newly abused daily in Mato Grosso. In Cuiabá alone, the state's capital, two cases of child sex abuse are  filed on average, every day.