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Sexual predators target Uruguay’s kids in care – and the state looks away [1]
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Date: 2023-07
One 14-year-old was found dead in a ditch with injuries to her head, back and neck. Another was found drowned. A third died of complications after an abortion.
Not only were the three Uruguayan teenagers the same age; they had something else in common, too. According to child welfare and advocacy officials, they were among at least 20 children and teenagers who had been sexually exploited or trafficked around Treinta y Tres province while in state care.
Prosecutors are investigating the three deaths in Treinta y Tres, 290 kilometres north-east of the capital Montevideo, but the circumstances surrounding their deaths remain unknown.
Sexual exploitation of children has been big news in Uruguay in recent months. As of July, ten alleged victims have come forward and filed reports stating that they were abused as minors by Gustavo Penadés, a top congressman from president Luis Lacalle Pou's party. Penadés has denied wrongdoing and claimed the accusations are part of a plot against him.
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But wide-scale allegations about sexual offences being carried out against children in the care of Uruguay’s state child welfare agency Inau date back to 2021 – when Inau itself and the advocacy and support group Gurises Unidos (United Children) filed a joint report with the prosecutor in Treinta y Tres city.
The report, based on research over a year by social workers and interviews with affected children, identified 30 people as suspects or accomplices in the exploitation and trafficking ring. They included police officers “linked to the network and/or facilitating its operation, receiving money to remain silent or divert information”. Some police agents “extort and manipulate teenagers, asking them for sexual services or images of their naked bodies in exchange for goods, drugs or even their silence,” the report added.
Treinta y Tres’s police chief Richard Lima, who has been in post since 2022, denied the allegations in the report.
“I must emphatically state that many rumours, such as the involvement of police officers in the Duche case, have no records, not even a mention from any source in the case file,” he told openDemocracy.
But the cases of sexual exploitation and trafficking in the report reflect a pattern revealed by a year-long openDemocracy investigation published today. We found Uruguayan law enforcement and judicial authorities frequently ignore the peril and plight of many adolescents and women, especially those at-risk.
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https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/sexual-predators-target-children-uruguay-state-care/
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