Reports of sexual violence in Colombia, which is mainly targeting children, has tripled over the past 20 years, according to the Medical Examiner’s Office.
According to the office, it conducted more than 26,000 rape tests in 2018, almost three times as many as in 1999 when almost 12,500 rape tests were carried out.
Rape in Colombia
Source: Medican Examiner’s Office
Of the victims who requested a rape test last year, more than 83% were children younger than 15 and almost 88% were younger than 18. In 1999, approximately 85% of the victims were under 18.
Age of alleged rape victims
Source: Medical Examiner’s Office
A preliminary report released by the office last month warned that his office had registered a 15% increase in the sexual abuse of children between January and April this year compared to the same period in 2018.
One child is raped every 20 minutes, Colombia’s medical examiner warns
The Medical Examiner’s Office blamed this growing and extraordinarily high percentage of sexual abuse of minors on growing sexual exploitation of children.
The commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents in our country is a scourge that is growing, a complex and often almost imperceptible problem that seriously violates the exercise of human rights in childhood and that compromises the health, dignity, equality, the safety and autonomy of minors. UNICEF estimates that… approximately 35,000 are sexually exploited and that age in which they are involved in these illicit activities is under the age of 10.
Medical examiner’s Office
Despite the alleged increase in the commercial sexual exploitation, family members continue to be the primary suspect in the alleged rape cases brought before the Medical Examiner’s Office.
In almost 70% of the reported rape cases of both adults and minors, the alleged perpetrator is a family member or a family friend.
Source: Medican Examiner’s Office
The factors that most drive the problem of exploitation of children and adolescents are those that make up the microsystem, that is, those within the immediate environment of the individual, with early sexual relations being the factor of greatest incidence, followed by factors that make up the macrosystem, that is, those of a socio-cultural nature where the legitimization of money is the predominant factor, and then there would be the factors of the mesosystem, that is, the one that includes the family environment or the environment closest to children or adolescents.
Medical examiner’s Office
The Medical Examiner’s Office said it hoped that reports like these contribute to authorities’ motivation to prevent sexual abuse, particularly that of children, and allows Colombian society to reflect on why so many of its children fall victim to sexual abuse.