Mothers of girls who have been sexually abused consider it a “mockery”.
“My daughter’s recovery has been quite painful, she did not eat, she did not get out of bed, she wanted to cut her veins” at only 10 years old, says the Peruvian María Emperatriz Fernández, who thinks that punishing rapists with chemical castration it is a “mockery”.
“I think the government is not putting itself in the shoes of victims who have been abused,” the 30-year-old woman told AFP about the bill sent to Congress by President Pedro Castillo.
Announcing the project on April 16, after the rape of a three-year-old girl shocked the country, the leftist president proclaimed that sexual abuse against children “will not be tolerated or go unpunished.”
Although the project has not yet been debated by Parliament, it faces rejection from mothers of victims, lawyers, doctors and activists. However, he found an echo in former presidential candidate Yonhy Lescano, one of Castillo’s rivals in the 2021 elections.
«We must be more severe and annul these rapists in their sexual faculties even when they are incarcerated. Congress must approve the project because not doing so is turning its back on the country,” the center-right politician told AFP.
frustrated attempts
Chemical castration consists of administering drugs that inhibit sexual desire. It is applied as a method of prevention and punishment for those who commit sexual assault. It is used in Russia, Poland, South Korea, Indonesia, and Moldova, among other countries, as well as in some states in the United States.
In Peru, Castillo is not the first to propose it. In 2005 an influential Catholic bishop, the Jesuit Luis Bambarén, did so.
“Just as a criminal is deprived of liberty, child rapists must be castrated. There may be a chemical castration. Why is he going to continue raping? », Said then the prelate, now deceased.
Along the same lines, in 2018 Lescano presented a chemical castration project to Congress. He received the endorsement of the Justice Commission, but was rejected by the plenary.
“They said it would not do any good. How do they know that the measure is useless, if it has never been approved? Since 2018, rape continues to be more aggressive, and taking into account the macho mentality that exists in Peru, it can have a more positive effect than in other countries,” says the politician.
In Peru, rapists of children under 14 are punished with life imprisonment.
In 2006, President Alan García sent a bill to impose the death penalty on child molesters, but Congress shelved it.
More than 10,000 prisoners
“Chemical castration is a joke for all childhoods and adolescents who have suffered abuse,” because it is “a method that practically does not help at all,” says Fernández.
She assures that it would be better to speed up trials and deny parole to those accused of rape. The lawyer who raped her daughter has been on the run since he was sentenced to life in prison a year ago.
“We do not agree, because in reality it is another expense for the government and really [el abusador] He’s still going to continue raping, there’s not going to be any change,” Magaly Aguilar, leader of the Mothers Fighting for Justice association, told AFP. Her daughter Sheyla was raped and murdered in 2018, at the age of 19.
“The problem is not below [en los órganos sexuales]If it’s not in their heads, they’re insane,” Patricia Acosta, whose daughter Estefhany has been missing since 2016, tells AFP. She was 23 years old.
In Peruvian prisons there are 10,104 prisoners for rape of minors (3,005 prosecuted and 7,099 sentenced). It is the crime with the most inmates, after aggravated robbery, according to the National Penitentiary Institute.
According to the Ministry of Women, more than 21,000 minors were victims of rape in the last four years. In 2021 there were 6,929 cases, 19 a day on average.
Expert Rejection
The head of the Medical Association of Peru, Raúl Urquizo, believes that chemical castration “does not solve the underlying problem.”
“The mental health of these people is deteriorating. What has to be worked on is the preventive and educational part of society itself », he tells AFP.
For his part, the jurist Diego García Sayán, former president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, considers that it is a “populist solution” under “the illusion that by giving all these patients an injection, the impact of this crime can be modified.”
«What there is now is a situation of thousands of defendants […] and there is no criminal sanction for the slowness with which the judicial processes take place, so that the real solution has to be there, “he tells AFP.
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