Child Sex Abuse - Laws > Abortion legal in Brazil, but still hard to get

 

‘I was terrified I was going to die.’ 

Rape victims in Brazil struggle to access

legal abortions

By Eléonore Hughes, The Associated Press

Posted Jun 20, 2025 02:35:18 AM.

 

Last Updated Jun 20, 2025 11:31:30 AM.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A 27-year-old Brazilian woman, who said she became pregnant after being raped in March during Carnival in Brasilia, should have been granted access to a legal abortion. But when she sought to terminate the pregnancy at a hospital around a month later, she was told she needed a police report to access the service, despite it not being a legal requirement.

She decided to abort at home with medication she bought on the black market, with only a few friends on site to help.

“I fainted several times because of the pain. I was terrified I was going to die,” she said.

The Associated Press does not identify people without their permission if they say they have been sexually assaulted.

In Brazil, abortion is legally restricted to cases of rape, life-threatening risks to the pregnant woman or if the fetus has no functioning brain. Theoretically, when a pregnancy results from sexual violence, the victim’s word should suffice for access to the procedure.

“The law doesn’t require judicial authorization or anything like that,” explained Ivanilda Figueiredo, a professor of law at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. “A woman seeking an abortion recounts the situation to a multi-disciplinary team at the healthcare clinic and, in theory, that should be enough.”

In practice, however, advocates, activists and health experts say women encounter significant barriers to ending a pregnancy even under the limited conditions provided for by the law. This is due to factors including lack of facilities, disparities between clinic protocols and even resistance from medical personnel.

“Healthcare professionals, citing religious or moral convictions, often refuse to provide legal abortions, even when working in clinics authorized to perform them,” said Carla de Castro Gomes, a sociologist who studies abortion and associate researcher at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

Women in Brazil also face geographical barriers to legal abortions. Only 290 facilities in a mere 3.6% of municipalities around the country of approximately 213 million people provide the service, according to a 2021 study from scientific journal Reports in Public Health.

In June 2022, four nonprofits filed a legal challenge with the Supreme Court, arguing that restrictions on abortion access violate women’s constitutional rights. The case is currently under review.

‘Still a taboo’

A 35-year-old cashier from a small city in the interior of Rio de Janeiro state also said she became pregnant as a result of a rape. But, unlike the woman in Brasilia, she chose to pursue an abortion through legal means, fearing the risks that come with a clandestine procedure.

Although Brazil’s Health Ministry mandates that, in the case of a pregnancy resulting from rape, healthcare professionals must present women with their rights and support them in their decision, the woman said a hospital committee refused to terminate the pregnancy. They claimed she was too far along, despite Brazilian law not stipulating a time limit for such procedures.

She eventually found help through the Sao Paulo-based Women Alive Project, a nonprofit specializing in helping victims of sexual violence access legal abortions. The organization helped her locate a hospital in another state, an 18-hour drive, willing to carry out the procedure.

Thanks to a fundraising campaign, the woman was able to travel and undergo the operation at 30 weeks of pregnancy in late April.

“We are already victims of violence and are forced to suffer even more,” she said in a phone interview. “It’s a right guaranteed by law, but unfortunately still seen as taboo.”

It's taboo to those who believe that all life is created by God. It is only the godless to whom it is not taboo, in my humble opinion.

Legal uncertainty

Brazil’s abortion laws are among the most constrictive in Latin America, where several countries — including Mexico, Argentina and Colombia — have enacted sweeping reforms to legalize or broadly decriminalize abortion.

This legislative environment is exacerbated by a political landscape in which far-right politicians, supported by Catholic and Evangelical voters who make up a majority in the country, regularly seek to further restrict the limited provisions within the country’s penal code.

In 2020, the government of far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro issued an ordinance requiring doctors to report rape victims seeking abortions to the police. Current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva revoked the measure in his first month in office in 2023.

But the measure left lasting effects.

“These changes end up generating a lot of legal uncertainty among health professionals, who fear prosecution for performing legal abortions,” Castro Gomes said.

Last year, conservative lawmaker Sóstenes Cavalcante proposed a bill to equate the termination of a pregnancy after 22 weeks with homicide, sparking widespread protests by feminist groups across Brazil. The protests ultimately led to the proposal being shelved.

But in November, a committee of the Chamber of Deputies approved a proposed constitutional amendment that would effectively outlaw all abortions by determining the “inviolability of the right to life from conception.” The bill is currently on hold, awaiting the formation of a commission.

Earlier this month, Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes, a Lula ally, came under fire after sanctioning a bill mandating anti-abortion messages on posters in municipal hospitals and other health establishments.

‘Doctors don’t tell you’

Advocates say access to abortion highlights significant disparities: women with financial means dodge legal restrictions by traveling abroad for the procedure, while children, poor women and Black women face greater obstacles.

According to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, 61.6% of the 83,988 rape victims in 2023 were under the age of 14. A statistical analysis that year by investigative outlet The Intercept estimated less than 4% of girls aged 10 to 14 who became pregnant as a result of rape accessed a legal abortion between 2015 and 2020.

In Rio de Janeiro’s Mare favela, one of the city’s largest low-income communities, the nonprofit Networks of Mare’s House of Women provides women with information regarding their reproductive rights, including legal provisions for abortions.

It was there, during a recent workshop, that Karina Braga de Souza, a 41-year-old mother of five, found out abortion is legal in certain cases in Brazil.

“We don’t have access (to information). Doctors don’t tell you,” she said.

Cross-border connections

Feminist groups in Brazil are campaigning at a federal level for enhanced access to legal abortion services.

Last year, “A Child Is Not a Mother,” a campaign by feminist groups, successfully advocated for the National Council for the Rights of Children and Adolescents to adopt a resolution detailing how to handle cases of pregnant child rape victims. The body, jointly made up of government ministries and civil society organizations, approved the resolution by a slim majority in December.

Brazilian activists also are seeking to improve access to abortion by forging links with organizations abroad.

In May, members of feminist groups in Brazil including Neither in Prison, Nor Dead and Criola met with a delegation of mostly Black U.S. state legislators. The meeting, organized by the Washington, D.C.-based Women’s Equality Center, aimed to foster collaboration on strategies to defend reproductive rights, especially in light of the U.S. Supreme Court 2022 decision to strip away the constitutional right to abortion.

In the meantime, the consequences for women who struggle to access their rights run deep.

The woman in Brasilia who underwent an abortion at home said she is coping thanks to therapy and the support of other women, but has been traumatized by recent events.

By being denied access to a legal abortion, “our bodies feel much more pain than they should,” she said. “Whenever I remember, I feel very angry.”

___

Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america.

Child Pornography > Telegram the #1 CSAM platform in Brazil with 1.25mn users

 

Over 1M users share pornography on Telegram in Brazil

The app ranks first by number of complaints received by SaferNet

Elaine Patricia Cruz

Published on 26/10/2024 - 15:00

São Paulo

A report drawn up by SaferNet, an NGO active in promoting human rights online since 2005, found that 1.25 million users of the messaging app Telegram are in group chats or channels that sell and share images of child sexual abuse and pornographic material. One of these communities alone—which was still active when the survey was made—had 200 thousand users.

Entitled Como o Telegram tem sido usado no Brasil como um espaço de comércio virtual por criminosos sexuais (“How Telegram has been used in Brazil as a virtual trading space by sex offenders”), the report was delivered Wednesday (Oct. 23) to São Paulo prosecutors, the Federal Police, and also to French authorities, who are investigating various crimes committed on Telegram. One of these probes recently saw the company’s CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, arrested in France. He is at liberty, but cannot leave the country.

The report was produced after a search of 874 Telegram links reported to SaferNet by internet users as containing images of child sexual abuse and exploitation. SaferNet analyzed them and found that 149 of them were still active and had not been restricted by the platform. In addition, the NGO identified a further 66 links that had never been reported before and which also contained criminal content.

“We did a thorough survey of the Telegram group links that were reported in Brazil through www.denuncie.org.br—SaferNet Brasil’s reporting channel—from January 1 to June 30 this year. Of these 874 links, 141 were still active during the months in which the verification took place (July through September). Of these active links, we found 41 groups in which it was proven there was not only distribution of child sexual abuse images, but also buying and selling. It was a free market, a trade in images of child sexual abuse, with real images, some self-generated images, and other images produced by artificial intelligence,” said Thiago Tavares, president of SaferNet Brasil.

In Brazil, the Statute of the Child and Adolescent defines the sale or exhibition of photos and videos of explicit sex scenes involving children and adolescents as a crime. It is also a crime to disseminate these images by any means and to possess files of this type. In SaferNet’s view, anyone who consumes images of child sexual violence is also an accomplice to child sexual abuse and exploitation.

According to Tavares, words and codes used by criminals to index child sexual abuse and exploitation content, and also to report illegal content related to child sexual abuse in different languages, were also collected and identified, he said in an interview with Agência Brasil.

Cryptocurrencies

SaferNet also discovered that some of the content is published by bots or sold using cryptocurrencies as payment, which makes it even more difficult to identify criminals. “We identified bots dedicated to creating new images for payment. You can upload someone’s photo, for example, and this robot will give you a nude or even pornographic image, in exchange for a fee. The payment is made via [instant payment] PIX or using fintechs or payment processors spread across 23 countries.” Of these 23 payment processors partnered with Telegram, SaferNet found at least five internationally sanctioned companies processing payments in Brazil.

These tools used for transactions on Telegram, Tavares warns, demonstrate “a blatant violation of Central Bank rules” and may also be used for money laundering and terrorist financing around the world.

“In the report, we also ask the Prosecution Service not only to notify the Central Bank, but also the National Strategy to Combat Money Laundering, whose secretariat is in the Ministry of Justice and Public Security, and to carry out studies and draft recommendations to fill the gaps in the regulation on the sector in Brazil, in order to stop this type of payment intended to finance networks of sexual exploitation of children and adolescents,” he went on to say.

Complaints

Telegram is the messaging app with the highest number of reports received by SaferNet. Since 2021, it has also been one of the ten domains with the most links associated with child pornography that have been reported to the NGO. Telegram has been the target of complaints for years for not removing Brazilian communities and users who commit crimes such as racial discrimination, attacks on democracy, apology for Nazism, or the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents.

“Telegram is a shady company operating on a global scale. It has 900 million users worldwide, and, according to its founder and president, it’s run by 35 engineers. In other words, it’s a purposefully and deliberately really small team,” Tavares pointed out.

The company’s business behavior is incompatible with Brazilian law, the Federal Constitution, the Statute of the Child and Adolescent, and the basic rules of compliance for the operation and development of economic activities in any country, SaferNet said.

Agência Brasil reached out to Telegram to comment, but had not received a response by the time this report was published.

Telegram allows users to report criminal content, channels, groups or messages. This can be done by emailing abuse@telegram.org with the subject “Report user @name.” Users must include details on the reason for the complaint and wait for a reply.

President of Brazil to Remove LGBT Influence from Public Schools

Brazil's backlash against LGBTQ's Social Engineering Campaign

President Bolsonaro, otherwise known as America's man in Brazil, is a polarizing figure. This revision of school textbooks will certainly result in expanding that polarization. Liberals will be up-in-arms and conservative Brazilians will be celebrating.

Activist Mommy

While many governments are kowtowing to the demands of the LGBT mob, there are some leaders who have decided to boldly put their foot down and return to truth and tradition.

One such leader is the newly elected Brazilian President, Jair Bolsonaro. Back in February of this year, he announced his plan to “revise textbooks in public schools and eliminate references to homosexuality, same-sex ‘marriage,’ and violence against women.”

I am concerned about the removal of 'violence against women', it should certainly be addressed from a moral standpoint. I also think homosexuality should be addressed in terms of bullying - tolerance of those who are different from ourselves.

LifeSite News reports:

There are also proposals to give the military control of some public schools. Once Bolsonaro took office, the Ministry of Education issued new guidelines for textbook publishers that erased references to gender ideology and sexism. The ministry also eliminated its diversity department.

On the eve of his Jan. 1 inauguration, Bolsonaro tweeted his intentions. “One of the goals to get Brazil out of the worst positions in international education rankings is to combat the Marxist rubbish that has spread in educational institutions.” Education Minister Ricardo Velez Rodriguez vowed in his inaugural speech to end the “aggressive promotion of the gender ideology.”

For more on this story, please visit Activist Mommy's blog.

Stories from UK, NZ & Brazil on Today's Global PnP List

Preventive detention for abuse of fourth child

I'm not familiar with this sentence, but it seems to be better than another short term in prison then release. My fear is that he will fool people into thinking he is better when, it should be obvious by now, he will never be better. Prison for the rest of his life is the appropriate sentence.

By David Clarkson

A 52-year-old Christchurch man has been jailed indefinitely for sex offences against a fourth child which followed years of intensive rehabilitation.

Rene De Kwant was given preventive detention by Justice Cameron Mander in the High Court at Christchurch, after admitting a representative charge about a series of indecent acts on an eight-year-old boy.

De Kwant has already served a nine-year jail term for sexual offending against three children.

Justice Mander told him: “You have been offending against children since 1990. You remain a high risk of reoffending and the level of harm you present is significant. I am satisfied that preventive detention is the appropriate response.”

Under the order, De Kwant cannot be considered for parole for five years, and then he will not be released until the Parole Board accepts his risk to the community has lowered.

Justice Mander also gave him a first-strike warning, under the system which imposes harsher sentences on people who reoffend with serious crimes.

In his latest offending, De Kwant befriended the boy’s mother and told her he “felt he had a personal connection with the child”. That led to him masturbating the boy several times when he was alone with him. The boy eventually disclosed the offending to his mother.

Justice Mander said the boy had been left “physically and emotionally exhausted” by the offending. His parents feel the child has regressed, suffers social problems at school, and has a fear of adult males.

Defence counsel Elizabeth Bulger urged that a finite prison term be imposed rather than an open-ended preventive detention term. She said De Kwant was willing to take any treatment or intervention arranged for him. He continued to have good support in the community.

The pre-sentence report writer referred to De Kwant being “angry and disgusted with himself”, and his expressions of remorse and shame were assessed as being genuine. But Justice Mander said it was “coupled with a high degree of self-pity for your situation”.

Justice Mander said he could only impose preventive detention if he was satisfied that De Kwant was likely to commit another qualifying offence after his release from custody.

“The protection of the community must be considered,” he said, referring to the long term difficulties De Kwant had caused to the child and his family.

“He is the fourth child on whom you have inflicted this insidious damage,” said the judge.

He noted that De Kwant had already undergone treatment including the Kia Marama programme for sex offenders, the Stop programme, and 47 one-on-one sessions with a clinical psychologist.

The treatment had not prevented him from reverting to a pattern of behaviour which included the sexual abuse of a child. He had abandoned the various teachings and skills he had been given, and the “refresher” course he had done. “You say you were shocked by the extent to which had strayed,” said the judge.

De Kwant was capable of separating his offending from the rest of his life, and remaining apparently normal to others. Although he had lived successfully in the community for a period, he had “failed to sustain the gains you achieved from previous intensive treatment”.

Council boss claims she was forced out after raising concerns about suspected child sexual exploitation

Camilla Turner, education editor 

A COUNCIL boss has claimed she was forced out after raising concerns about suspected grooming and sexual exploitation of underage girls.

Maggie Siviter, a former child safeguarding lead at North Somerset Council, claimed that authorities failed to act after she warned that licensed premises were suspected of being used to groom vulnerable young girls.

Speaking at her employment tribunal, she said she was “mindful” of the situation that emerged in Rotherham, where child sex abuse by predominantly British-Pakistani men continued for years, unchallenged by authorities.

Ms Siviter told Pontypridd County Court that she had concerns about the influence of Cllr Peter Bryant on the council’s willingness to investigate her claims. She claimed Cllr Bryant was an acquaintance of some of the local businessmen accused of owning premises where child sexual exploitation was suspected to have taken place.

Ms Siviter said her dismissal from North Somerset Council in November 2015 – after just six months in the post – was “retaliation” for making disclosures to Ofsted, the watchdog for children and young people in care.

She convened a series of council strategy meetings about the suspected grooming of vulnerable girls, but escalated her concerns to Ofsted after she realised that no risk assessments had been carried out, despite her warnings.

The girls – one of whom was in care, and one who was previously in care – were suspected of being sexually exploited at Butterfly’s massage parlour, and an Indian restaurant in Weston-super-Mare.

Suspicions were first raised by Julian Feltwell, a council official who was investigating premises owned by local restaurateur Alkas Hussain for supplying counterfeit tobacco, the tribunal heard.

“There was the suspicion [that] tobacco was being used to groom and reward children for possible child sexual exploitation,” said Mr Feltwell, an assistant manager of community and consumer services at North Somerset Council.

“I became aware employees of one businessman in question resided in a house of multiple occupancy owned by Cllr Bryant.”

Mr Feltwell said that Cllr Bryant was connected to another businessman who he said was “previously suspected of allowing young girls on to his licensed premises where the suspicion was that they were being groomed”.

Mr Feltwell told the tribunal that Cllr Bryant had provided a character reference for the businessman when he stood trial for pulling a shotgun on a council bailiff who was collecting unpaid council tax. The businessman later served a prison sentence for the offence.

Ms Siviter told the tribunal that she found it “concerning” that Cllr Bryant “had connections with those who we’d discussed as being potentially harmful to children”, adding: “There were concerns the behaviour of an elected member was affecting the safeguarding of children at risk of sexual exploitation.”

Ms Siviter called three multi-agency strategy meetings between August and October 2015 to discuss intelligence about the suspected child sexual exploitation. She convened the second meeting after it came to light that children had been working at the massage parlour in Weston-super-Mare.

“One girl said she had worked there for 18 months and made allegations that she had been forced to have sex with men,” she told the tribunal.

Ms Siviter said she contacted Ofsted after the third meeting, when she felt her pleas to the council to investigate the matter were falling on deaf ears.

“The quality of the service provided to children was severely compromised. I later disclosed to a colleague I’d made a whistleblowing statement,” she said.

Tony Oliver, chair of North Somerset Safeguarding Children Board, described one of the meetings as “based on rumours and speculation”.

The tribunal continues this week.

North Somerset, UK

Canoeist Emma Kelty was 'raped and tortured' before bungling attackers set off SOS alarm

British canoeist Emma Kelty was tortured and raped as she died after being shot, villagers have claimed.

The full details of the adventurer's last moments were revealed in a confession by one of the suspects hours after the attack.

Ringleader Evanilson Gomes da Costa, 24, died Wednesday after being shot by rival gangsters.

Residents of the small riverside community of Lauro Sodre, near to where the crime took place, said all seven men accused of her murder are well-known drugs users in the village.

And one local who knows da Costa - known by his nicknamed Baia - said the gangster spoke to him in the early hours of the morning following Ms Kelty's death last Wednesday night, revealing what they had done.

The man, who didn't want to be named, said: "He said he was one of four men. The woman had put up her tent on the beach in exactly the area where the Colombia drug traffickers go through, and which is crawling with pirates who wait for them to arrive to attack.

"These men aren't pirates though, they are just drug users. We are all shocked that these men from our community did such a terrible thing to this woman.

"When the men saw her tent they thought it belonged to a Colombian with drugs, so they started firing from about 50 metres away. The woman was hit in the arm. She started waving frantically and screaming for help."

He said that when the four men saw that she was a woman they attacked her and, still believing she was carrying drugs, cut off her hair with a knife while demanding to know where the drugs were.

According to the man, one of the group then slit her through with the knife, before all four men "sexually abused her".

He said they then dragged her body to the river and dumped it in the fast-moving water.

He said: "The men fled into the forest after we all found out what they had done. We provided the police with the details and their identities. We're all disgusted by what they have done."

Yesterday the chief police officer in Coari, Jose Afonso Barradas Junior, also revealed that one of the suspects, Artur Gomes da Silva, had confessed to slitting the former headteacher's throat.

He was arrested yesterday after an anonymous tip-off.

And Mr Barradas Junior also revealed how the "stupid" gangsters unwittingly alerted authorities to their crime after accidentally triggering a distress signal on her GPS device, police said today.

Investigators had first thought the emergency alert which pinpointed Emma Kelty's exact location and triggered a search operation by Brazil's Navy had been sent by the victim herself.

But in fact the 'SOS' button was pressed by one of her killers who was trying to work out how to use the device they had stolen, an hour and a half after her death.

Police have now recovered the GPS device, as well as a mobile phone and a memory card, which the gang of seven 'pirates' sold to local villagers after killing her.

The GPS signal sent at 10pm last Wednesday night led investigators to the riverside village of Lauro Sodre, 150 miles west of Manaus, and a manhunt which has brought about the arrest of three men accused of her murder.

A fourth man was killed yesterday in an unrelated gangfight, and three brothers are still on the run.

Yesterday Coari police chief Jose Afonso Barradas Junior said he doubted anyone would have discovered what happened to Ms Kelty if the "stupid" gangsters hadn't set off her emergency locator by mistake.

He said: "They didn't know how it worked, so were messing around with it and pushing buttons.

"One of them must have pushed the button which transmitted an alert that she was in trouble. In turn the company that received it alerted the Navy, along with the exact location of where the button was pushed.

"Without that, it would have been very difficult to know where in this vast area of jungle she had gone missing.

"It would have probably remained an unsolved mystery and her killers never brought to justice.

"The place where she disappeared is a very complicated area, it's difficult to access and there are no telephones or mobile signal. The criminals thought they could kill her in impunity, but then they stupidly pressed the only button which could have turned them in to the police."

Mr Barradas Junior added that some of the locals who bought Ms Kelty's stolen items from the pirates later hid them in the forest after finding out who they belonged to.

He said: "They were afraid that they could be arrested for being in possession of stolen property.

"But they later took police to the places where they had hid them so the items could be recovered."

Police Arrest Neymar Lookalike Who Blackmailed Girls with Raunchy Videos

Neymar of Brazil © Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters

Brazilian police have arrested a man posing as soccer star Neymar after the imposter attempted to blackmail girls with racy videos they sent him after promising them they would become TV stars and models.

Lookalike Carlos Antonio Rodrigues was detained after pretending to be the Brazil and Barcelona forward. He fraudulently procured a number of intimate videos and images from the girls before demanding money from them.

One of the victims, who wanted to remain nameless, was invited to a party in Barcelona by the 30-year-old conman after being convinced he was in fact the famous footballer.

Rodrigues promised her he would organize a photo shoot for a well-known magazine and a part in a reality television show in exchange for the shots.

“Then we talked by video thinking it was Neymar on the screen,” she told Brazilian television network Globo anonymously.

“At first I said no, then I went down to just some little panties and a bra. I really thought that would be it.

“Then he was extorting us a lot and even though we told him we didn’t have any money he kept pressing us.”

She and a friend sent Rodrigues 350 Brazilian real ($107) for fast-track papers to Spain, but after he attempted to extort more money by threatening to release the clips, she called police, who arrested him in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais.

Rodrigues is suspected of working with an accomplice using fake profiles on a Brazilian social network to lure potential targets.


Vardy lookalike

In another bizarre doppelganger story, Lee Chapman, who was noted as a lookalike to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy after the latter’s improbable Premier League winning season, said his life had been ruined by angry football fans.

It all began well for postman Lee, who initially enjoyed a close relationship with the real-life Vardy. But he received a wave of abuse from angry England fans after their team’s dismal performance at Euro 2016. This was followed by being suddenly blocked on Twitter and reported to police for stalking by the footballer himself.

Neymar, who captained his national team to gold medal glory at their home Olympics, is not short on lookalikes.

Teenager Barry Cotter made headlines when he signed for League of Ireland team Limerick FC in August last year.

The sixteen-year-old promised to emulate the Brazil ace with whom he shares an uncanny resemblance and “score at least one or two goals in each game” in the league of Ireland under-17 campaign.

Second Olympic Boxer Reportedly Arrested on Rape Suspicion in Rio

What's going on? Two apparent attempted rapes in the Olympic village and the Olympics have barely begun. Has this been happening for decades and been covered up, or is this a new phenomenon perhaps related to the easy availability of pornography? Is it possible that some people can't distinguish between pornography and reality?


Namibian flag bearer Jonas Junius. © Stoyan Nenov / Reuters

Namibian boxer and flag bearer Jonas Junius has been arrested for an attempted sexual assault on a housekeeper in the Olympic Village, Brazilian media report.

Police in Rio have said that Junius attempted to grab and kiss the housekeeper and also offered her money for sex, Brazilian online publication globo.com reported.

Inspector Veloso from Recreio police station in Recreio dos Bandeirantes has said that unless Junius is bailed, he will be transferred to the high security prison in Bangu by the end of today, as reported by the Daily Mail.

Gabriel Elizondo, an Al Jazeera reporter in Rio, tweeted that “Junius is expected to be transferred to Rio’s Bangu prison later today.”

The 22-year-old is scheduled to fight in the round of 32 against Frenchman Hassan Amzile on Day 6 of the Games.

His arrest comes after another boxer, Moroccan Hassan Saada, was arrested on suspicion of raping two women in a room in the Olympic Village on Friday.

Police confirmed that Saada will be jailed for a period of 15 days pending a full investigation, ruling him out of competing at the Games.

I'm glad to read that both these boxers will likely miss their Olympic events. Brazil must send a message to Olympic athletes that such behaviour will cost them their chance to participate in the Games. 

Mass Child Rape Video Reignites 'Culture of Rape' Argument in Brazil

By Ed Adamczyk  

An International Women's Day protest in Brazil in 2013. Activists are outraged over the alleged rape of a Rio de Janeiro girl, 16, last week, a portion of which was posted to social media. Photo by camilagarcia/Flickr/Wikimedia

RIO DE JANEIRO, May 27 (UPI) -- The search is on in Rio de Janeiro for at least 30 men suspected of raping a girl and posting video footage of the attack on social media.  Arrest warrants have been issued, including one for the boyfriend of the victim, 16, who said she was drugged after visiting his home Saturday and awoke, surrounded by men, in a different house. Her statement to police said she awoke Sunday, naked and injured, and learned several days later that 40 seconds of the incident was videotaped and posted online to a Twitter account.


The search is concentrated in a poor neighborhood in west Rio de Janeiro.

Information about the assault reignited anger in Brazil over what some women's groups call a culture of rape in the country, and advocacy groups are planning marches and protests in upcoming days.

The topic, including demands for reforms including more protection of women from male violence, was the focus of protests and marches in March on International Women's Day. There have also been numerous expressions of anger over the assault on social media, under the hashtag #EstuproNuncaMais, or "Rape never again."

2 Kiwi Expats, Including Father Christmas, Facing Child Sex Crimes in Brazil & Australia

A Kiwi expat abused a series of young children in Rio de Janeiro after luring them with his likeness to Father Christmas, police in Brazil say.

Bearded Paul Barry Clark, believed to be in his 70s, was arrested on Saturday on suspicion of raping a nine-year-old boy.

Ex-Kiwi Paul Clark

He is also suspected of abusing other children, aged nine, ten and 11.

The mother of the first victim called police after her son told her he had been given pocket money by Clark after being abused by him.

The boy is also said to have named yet more children he said were abused, including one aged just six.

Clark is said to have committed crimes in Campo Grande, a poor, distant suburb of Rio de Janeiro many kilometres from the city's picture-postcard beaches.

The case is being investigated by officers from the local Civil Police force. In Brazil, the Civil Police employ detectives while the Military Police provide frontline officers.

Clark, said to have lived in Brazil for several decades, was already facing investigation over alleged crimes against the three other children.

After his arrest, officers seized a camera and computer from his home, which were said to contain photos and videos of minors.

Child sex abuse, including by foreign tourists and expats, is a significant problem in Brazil, especially in the poorer North-East and Amazon regions where desperate poverty and corrupt public officials allow paedophiles to operate with impunity.


New Zealand-born Fire-fighter Pleads Guilty to Child Porn Charges in NSW

A New Zealand-born firefighter who was honoured for his work during the fatal Queensland floods in 2012 has pleaded guilty to charges of sexually exploiting children and could face up to 15 years in jail.

Banora Point, NSW

Tony Brian Gillespie was arrested on November 3 last year after a police probe discovered that he boasted online about enjoying "pre-teen" child sex images.

Under the pseudonym "Tommyfun1"' Gillespie started downloading thousands of images from users of the file sharing website GigaTribe, including videos of child abuse.

A former member of the New South Wales fire brigade in Banora Point on the state's northern coast, Gillespie, 31, admitted he downloaded and disseminated the material after two laptops and a mobile phone were seized by police.


Gillespie, who also runs a lawn-mowing business resigned from his on-call job with the fire service in December.

Police allege Gillespie told the discussion forum he liked pre-teens and shared his password with another user to access 83 files on his account, a number of which contained child abuse material.

Gillespie last month pleaded guilty to all six charges relating to the downloading,  promotion and possession of child abuse material.

Until he is sentenced in the Tweed Heads Magistrates Court later this year Gillespie has been ordered to live at his parents house and have no contact with children aged under 16.

Brazil Child Sex Trade Alarm as World Cup Nears

She is a world-class swimmer who represented Brazil at three consecutive Olympic Games and is one of the country's most successful and prominent female athletes.

Joana retired from swimming after the last Olympic Games in London, partly because she felt she could no longer compete at the top level and partly because she has a new battle to fight.

As a child Joana was repeatedly sexually abused over many years in a country and, in particular, a region where the issue is rarely talked about and where offenders are rarely prosecuted.

"When a child is raped or abused here, even if there's an investigation, the way it happens is never sympathetic to the victim," says Joana at her apartment in the northern city of Recife.

Joana was abused by someone she knew and trusted but that's not always the case.

Joana Maranhao has founded the
campaign group Infancia Livre

"It's worse for poor kids in this region," Joana tells me.

"But it's not about how poor or rich you are. Here it was almost seen as normal and the police have nowhere near enough people to investigate."

Joana's "new race" - as she puts it - is her charity and campaign group, "Infancia Livre" (Free Childhood).

She's determined to help young people, many without the education and drive that she has, who are victims of abuse in a part of Brazil that has a terrible reputation and record for protecting its youth.

Recife, and the wider coastal region in the northern state of Pernambuco, is one of the fastest growing regions in Brazil.

With its long white beaches it's an increasingly popular destination and where four football World Cup games will be played his summer.

Recife football stadium

Economic growth has brought thousands of workers here from other parts of Brazil and overseas. But according to aid workers these areas are also frequented by men looking for sex, and that's often sex with children.

Just a block from the beach, as music blares from the open boot of a car, men stand around drinking and watching a group of women a few yards away.

This is the city's red light district but the difference here is that while they may dress and make themselves up like women some of these girls are only just in their teens. One in four sex workers here is thought to be a child.

Aginaide Lynch is a co-ordinator for the Happy Child charity here in Recife.

She works with street children or those caught up in the sex trade. They have a safe house and other centres in the city dedicated to trying to turn lives around but she admits that with minimal official help and facing such overwhelming challenges, it's just a drop in the ocean.

"In this region, the north-east, people come here specifically for this and it'll get worse during the cup," says Ms Lynch.

She says that for the so-called "sex tourists", it's "easy and formalised".

"Even when men arrive at the airport, taxi drivers or hotel staff help them to find girls. The police are usually absent or even compliant in the business of child abuse so we have to take care of the problem ourselves and get the kids off the streets."

A government poster campaign calls
on the public to protect Brazil's children

It's not always girls and boys from the streets, with drugs addictions and absent family structures, that fall victim to the sex tourists.

Pregnant at 16, Ana's own childhood is already lost. She's not a prostitute but has been having sex since she was 12. Ana - not her real name - says girls here go with foreigners because they are wealthy and generous.

Ana is from a working class background and, although her dad no longer lives at home, her mother clearly cares about her daughter's plight. But when, exasperated, her mum went to the police, they didn't even recognise Anna as a victim.

"I've got lots of friend who go with foreigners - gringos. They come here for the girls, you know - working girls, Ana tells me as she sits surrounded by baby clothes, six months into her pregnancy.

She's clearly too young and too vulnerable for the situation she's in but shrugs her shoulders and says: "The guys have lots of money and give the girls loads of things like a place to live or jewellery."

The laws in Brazil regarding child abuse are, on paper at least, relatively strong.

Joana Maranhao's revelations about her past and her willingness to speak out have even led to a new law, in her name, extending the time by which perpetrators of crimes against children can be prosecuted.

But it's not enough and, especially here in the north of the country, there are cultural barriers to break down as well as legal ones.

Brazilian society is often accused of sexualising children. The Novina phenomenon, where internet videos and songs portray young girls as attainable, sexual objects, is strong in this region.

Jessica Barbosa from Action Aid

Jessica Barbosa is from the British charity Action Aid, which has several projects running in the area. In these poor areas, children are particularly vulnerable to the attentions of men with money and promises.

"It's a situation that we think is going to be worse in the World Cup because we have men from outside," she says.

"We have vulnerable girls who need money and who think they'll have a better life in other countries. And we have no serious public policies to prevent this situation."

Twelve-year-old Andrea is proof of that.

She has not been abused but only thanks to her mother's vigilance. She tells me how she's unable to rely on the law to stop older men harassing or trying to lure her daughter with gifts from clothes to popcorn.

So she's had to make her a virtual prisoner in her own home.

A high-profile global campaign, called "It's a Penalty" and fronted by English and Brazilian footballers, warns World Cup visitors not to take advantage of Brazil's reputation for easy sex.

In this World Cup city, kids high on drugs sell themselves for the price of a cup of coffee.

It's an ugly business that embarrasses Brazil when the country is showing itself off to the world.

Meanwhile:

The Brazilian Health Ministry has dropped an online campaign entitled "I'm happy being a prostitute".

The message was part of a wider education programme about sexually-transmitted diseases and was aimed at reducing prejudice against sex workers.

Health Minister Alexandre Padilha said he had never endorsed the advert: "I do not think this is a message the ministry should be sending."

Critics in Brazil say the campaign glorified prostitution.

Mr Padilha said the message was being tested on the ministry's website, but it was not meant to be published.

"For as long as I remain in office, an ad like that will not be part of our campaigns," he told Agencia Estado. Another slip like that and you may not remain in office very long.

Also:

Sports giant Adidas is suspending the sale of World Cup T-shirts after Brazil's authorities complained they sexualised the country's image.

One read "Looking to score?" next to a scantily-dressed woman; another printed a heart shaped like a bikini-clad bottom with the phrase "I love Brazil".

Brazil's tourism board, Embratur, says it is vehemently against any products that link Brazil's image to sex appeal.

Adidas is one of the World Cup's main sponsors and its ball provider.

Following the controversy, the company said it was withdrawing the T-shirts - a limited edition meant for sale in the United States.

"Adidas always pays close attention to the opinion of its consumers and partners," its statement read.

"Therefore, it is announcing that these products will not be sold anymore."

Earlier on Tuesday, the country's tourism ministry had already criticised the products saying "any links between national icons and images with sex appeal" were against the country's official marketing policies.

"Such an attitude indirectly contributes to committing crimes such as sexual child and adolescent exploitation," it said.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff also reacted, tweeting that Brazil was happy to greet tourists for the World Cup. But her country was also ready to fight sexual tourism, Mrs Rousseff wrote.

In a statement, Brazil's Embratur said that "Brazil does not tolerate this type of crime on its territory."

Brazil says it has been trying to distance itself from the sexual stereotypes that marked the country for decades.

Today Marks One Year for this Blog, so Where are We?

Today marks one year since I started this blog and what has been accomplished?

Unfortunately, we will never know this side of Heaven. I have no idea how many people became aware of the hardly believable magnitude of child sex abuse because of this blog.

What I know:

I do know that we have had 15,000 page-views from most countries on earth.

I also know that by the end of today, 120,000 Google+ users will have had access to my posts, and that just since the beginning of 2014.

I know that in my very modest Google+ circles are 9 Pastors, 5 ministry leaders, two lawyers and 2 Muslims. (No, I don't know why.)

I know that I could accomplish none of this but by the power and blessing of Jesus Christ.

What I don't know:

What I don’t know is how much influence this blog has had on raising the issue and on motivating some response to the issue of child sex abuse.

I don’t know if, or how much influence this blog has had in raising the issue of the kidnapping of nearly 300 school girls in Nigeria and the Nigerian government’s almost complete lack of concern.

I don't know if this blog has had any influence on the upsurge in activity on solving Madeleine McCann's abduction.

I don’t know if I have convinced anyone of you that God needs our prayers to intervene in this the worst atrocity mankind has ever inflicted upon itself.

I don’t know how many of you, or if any of you are praying my 3:15PM prayer or some other prayer daily or weekly for an end to child sex abuse.

I don’t know if any of you are praying for more Christians to make a commitment to pray daily or weekly for these badly abused children.

I don’t know how many of you have reposted, re-tweeted, shared, forwarded, liked, favourited, etc., etc. in order to convince more Christians to be praying.

I don’t know if I have convinced anyone of you how much this issue goes to the very heart of being a Christian.

I don’t know if I have convinced anyone of you that this issue and our response, or lack thereof, to it will be a significant factor on Judgment Day.

I write this blog as much for the reader as for the object of the blog – sexually abused or potentially sexually abused children. I write it so that you will have a much better inheritance in Eternity and a much more intimate relationship with Jesus Christ here and now.

I would love to hear from you, very few of you comment or respond in any way. You can Tweet me @GaryWmMyers; Email me at garymsmail@gmail.com; Google+ me at Gary Wm Myers, or just comment on one of my posts. 

I pray God’s blessing on each one of you who reads this, and a special blessing on those of you who will respond in some way.

Factoids (sounds painful doesn't it?)

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