OPINION: Institutional aggression against sex-crime victims

The reality of the sexual abuse of children, adolescents, adults and even older adults and people with disabilities is unknown, and the Panamanian State is not organized to attend appropriately to the situation. In the case of minors, In the year 2017 alone, 2,218 cases were reported to the authorities.

The majority of victims are girls. Neither the Ministry of Social Development nor the National Secretariat of Children, Adolescents and Families have specific programs to prevent or address sexual aggression.

Panama lacks shelters and special centers of rehabilitation and therapy to attend to this population.

Victims are humiliated and treated with apathy by an  indifferent  government bureaucracy.

The judicial system revictimizes them and, even, questions the facts and incidents of those who were abused. The social and family stigma that these legal cases produce overwhelms the victims and their loved ones. The absence of a specific public policy represents another form of aggression, this time institutional. Between so much hypocrisy and double political morality, the parties of government and opposition and the officials in charge of these tasks could take the first step, implementing comprehensive sexual education as the best preventive tool LA PRENSA, Mar. 31.