The question seems forbidden: can a minor have sexual relations with an adult? As uncomfortable as it may be, the question is key to analyzing the two cases that have exploded in recent weeks: that of the producer Marcelo Corazza and the driver’s Jey Mammon. Despite the fact that in public discourse the response may be emphatic, in the academic and legal field the consent It is a complex issue that brings into play variables such as power asymmetrythe gender roles and the cultural values of each time. Otherwise, how else could it be explained that the same acts that are categorically repudiated today were seen as natural until just a few years ago?
In Argentina, the law establishes that from the age of 13 a person can consent to a sexual relationship. However, this is not a universal criterion and, in fact, the age of consent It is a subject that is currently in full debate. In countries like France, for example, just two years ago the limit was set at 15 -until then there was no specific age- and in Latin America the laws contemplate a very wide range that goes from 12 to 18. And although in The West may seem dystopian, there are regions of the world where it is still legitimate for an 11-year-old girl to marry a 40-year-old man.
From the moment the judicial investigation against breastplate and the complaint against mammon The word “pedophilia” was installed in the media. Despite the fact that these are very different cases, the social condemnation against the two men was forceful and there was no shortage of those who spoke of their monstrosity or who pointed out that they were psychopaths. However, when you look at the statistics and history, you realize that this type of act is much more frequent than anyone might suppose.
In the psychiatric medical universe, pedophilia is defined as a disorder in which the affected person feels arousal or sexual pleasure through activities or sexual fantasies with children or adolescents. The first to use the concept were the Greeks. In that society it was common – and acceptable – for young people between the ages of 13 and 19 to have sexual relations with their teachers. But you don’t have to go back to antiquity to find famous stories of this kind. In the 19th century, in Argentina, Jose de San Martin he married Remedios de Escalada at 34 when she was 14. And in the 20th century, in 1955, “Lolita” was published, the “love” story of a 40-year-old man with his 12-year-old stepdaughter who became a masterpiece of universal literature.
These stories are repeated in anonymity. It is enough to talk at the family table about the ages of parents, grandparents or uncles. Will they be the product of the society in which they were brought up? To analyze these issues, the second half of the 20th century brought two innovations: the recognition of childhood and the feminist perspective, which for the first time included the issue of gender stereotypes.
It happens that even though nobody doubts that boys and girls are subjects of rights, in the history of humanity their visibility is very recent. The American intellectual Lloyd deMause was one of the first to study the subject. In 1982 he wrote: “The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken. The further back one goes in the past, the more exposed children are to violent death, abandonment, beatings, terror and sexual abuse”.
Perhaps there are some of the reasons why it is so difficult to talk about child sexual abuse. When a story comes to light in which an adult forces a child to have relationships through violence or coercion, understanding the dimension of that act is quite simple. Who could say that this is not a crime? However, there are more subtle situations that do not include force or direct coercion, but are still abusive.
hardship and culture
The feminist movements were key to modifying the Argentine law. In 1999, Law 25,087 was modified from being called “Crimes against honesty” to “Crimes against sexual integrity”. Lawmakers also decided to raise the age of consent from 12 to 13 years.
Betina Riva She is a historian and researcher at the National University of La Plata and was in charge of studying how prosecutors and judges at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century understood sexual consent. Her objective was to answer a question that, at first glance, seems simple: “Who can want, did they want?”. “Can we say that a person by the mere fact of turning 12 or 13 is in a position to understand everything that a sexual relationship implies? Analyzing those files, she saw that very marked gender stereotypes appeared: that women should be more careful, that men should always want to have sex, that homosexuals were deviant. She terrifies me that I don’t see so many differences with what we hear today. The biggest changes are discursive, today we listen to the victims a little more, but the questioning continues to appear first, ”she assured NEWS.
For rivaThinking about raising the age of consent in the penal system does not resolve the issue. “It is cultural. Phrases are constantly heard: “she seemed older”, “I’m not going to ask her for the document”, “the girls are more developed now”. That is not solved by a law. It has to do with gender roles, with thinking about what we teach men to love and what we teach women to love,” she said.
In the same line he reflected Francisco Broglia, lawyer and defender of the Provincial Public Criminal Defense Service of Santa Fe. “To believe that the punitive system is going to solve the problem of child sexual abuse is really absurd. As Paul Preciado says, we are part of a pharmacopornographic society. Our ESI was the porn movies where a lot of these things are enabled,” he assured.
brogliaIn addition, he assured that the scheme of sexual crimes in Argentina is complex. No child under the age of 13 can give consent because the law presumes that they do not have the capacity to understand the act. “Most of the doctrine and jurisprudence understand that it is a presumption that does not admit evidence to the contrary,” said the expert.
From 13 to 16 years old, the figure of rape appears. “It establishes that certain conditions must exist in that strip for there to be a crime. That is, it is not enough with the existence of a sexual relationship with a minor,” added Broglia. At that age, according to Argentine law, an adolescent can have consensual sexual relations with an adult and for it to be a crime, the experience of the minor and the use of the older person must be proven. “That use can appear due to the asymmetric relationship, due to a very marked age difference. He is a controversial figure because when one reads the doctrine one sees that it was always thought of as a function of heterosexual relations and that he is still a figure closely associated with that idea of honesty, of the older man who is going to steal a young woman’s honesty through to vitiate their consent,” he added.
From the age of 16 the figure of corruption of minors appears. “It is also a problematic concept because what it is is not defined in the Penal Code. What is corruption? If you read Soler, it is the deviation from sexual normality. And what is sexual normality? In the old criminal law books, homosexuality is spoken of as an abnormality, ”he concluded.
Power and asymmetry
A well-known psychiatrist who works in the judicial field as an expert took up the idea that the penal system is not only not enough, but that it comes back again and again to question the victims. “It is not about simply believing any whistleblower. Obviously it should be investigated. But in sexual crimes, like in no other, the life, work and mental health of the complainant is first investigated before the possible aggressor. There you already have a starting point. And the reality is that my experience has shown me that girls and boys aged 12, 13 and 14 come who say they wanted to be with their attacker, but when you investigate you see a tremendous vulnerability that the other took advantage of. I see it every day, ”she assured NEWS.
In the same vein, he opined Susana Toparosi, child and adolescent psychoanalyst, author of “En carne viva. Child and adolescent sexual abuse”. “When we talk about children and adolescents we talk about people in full psychic constitution. We cannot say that an adolescent can be in a relationship of parity with an adult, ”she assured.
In addition, he underlined the cultural bias that this topic inevitably has. “Not so many years ago, if a girl got pregnant as a result of a rape, she was the one questioned. It was also normal for a 14-year-old to be with someone 15 years older than her, but today we can think about what happened to her in relation to formulating her own desires and desires. Many of those relationships happened when there were no instruments to think about them in the same way as today, ”she added.
Sergio Grosman He is a psychiatrist and president of the chapter of psychotherapies of the Association of Argentine Psychiatrists. Like Toparosi, there are no gray areas for him: “What happens when we see a 15-year-old teenager with someone twice his age is that there is a huge difference in power, generally given by the economic position, by the position of authority . Of course there are forms of abuse in which it is frightened and other forms in which the less powerful person is ‘seduced’ by the adult”, he maintained.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), one in five minors is a victim of sexual abuse before the age of 17. It is clear that it is not the same to force a minor to have sexual relations or to do it voluntarily, nor is it the same for the boy to be 11 or 17 years old. However, there is no doubt that this is a stage of vulnerability and that older adults are responsible for their care and protection.
by Giselle Leclercq and Marcos Teijeiro
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