Chemical Castration is not a Solution to Fight Rape, Says Minister

By Xiu Ying, Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Minister Damares Alves (Woman, Family, and Human Rights) said this week that chemical castration for rapists does not solve the problem of rapes committed against children and adolescents.

The method, however, is defended by President Jair Bolsonaro who, as a federal deputy, was the author of a bill on the subject.

“Chemical Castration does not solve the problem. We have some proposals in the House and Senate underway, but they don’t solve the problem. Why is that? In regard to a person who commits violent acts against a child, chemical castration will affect only one organ; however, they have their hand, a stick, wood, a bottle. Children are being abused with bottles in Brazil,” the minister said during an interview with Olga Bongiovanni, on Rede TV.

According to data from the 2018 Atlas of Violence, 50.9 percent of rape victims in Brazil are children under the age of 13. Among them, 30 percent of crimes are committed by people they know.

During an interview with UOL in December last year, Damares detailed that she had been the victim of a series of rapes when she was a child.

Bolsonaro’s bill proposes chemical castration for those convicted of rape and rape of a vulnerable person (which includes, among others, children under 14 years of age).

As a requirement for obtaining parole and regime progression, the detainee would undergo voluntary chemical treatment to inhibit sexual desire.

Only by completing the treatment with satisfactory results would he return to freedom. The bill was filed by the Presiding Board of the House of Representatives in January of this year.

At the end of the legislature, bills that were not approved by the committee responsible are filed. To be disengaged, these would need to be resubmitted by other parliamentarians, given another numbering and then the process resumed.

He defended the proposal in the presidential debate in which he participated in last year’s elections, on TV Bandeirantes. “I have a bill that proposes the voluntary chemical castration for the offender who requests a sentence progression, which I believe would greatly reduce violence against women if it were approved,” he said on August 9th, 2018.