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Sources

The Town In Brazil Where Girls Are Married Off Before 14

CARTA CAPITAL (Brazil)

Worldcrunch

One year has passed since Carlos Augusto Catanheide first noticed the girl with brown skin and green eyes who went to his tiny shop to buy flour. She was 13 and he was 47. They got married soon after in Conceição do Lago Açu, a small town with 15,000 inhabitants in the countryside of Maranhão, in northern Brazil.

Her story and others like them were described in a recent reportage in the São Paulo magazine Carta Capital that explored the lingering phenomenon of underaged wives in Brazil. For girls, marrying before 14 is common in many parts of Brazil, even if the legal minimum age is 16.

In this case, the girl`s mother, Tânia Fonseca, felt nothing but relief with the wedding. "I told him she wasn't a virgin anymore. And that if he wanted her even so, he could try. They spent the night together. The next day, he came here to say that she would stay with him."

In Conceição do Lago Açu, 16-year-old girls are considered too old to get married, she told Carta Capital. Tânia's daughter lost her virginity when she was raped at the age of 12. Her first boyfriend ended up in jail. The second one hit her frequently. The third one was Catanheide. "We're very poor," , says Tânia. "This was a blessing. She had left school two years before she met him. Now she is studying again."

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Society

Imperfect Victim: What A Chinese Series About Sexual Assault Can And Can't Say

A new melodrama broadcast in China about sexual assault in the workplace is a sign that some difficult questions are being addressed, but that serious taboos remain in Chinese society and public life.

Poster from a series showing two women and a man.

Poster for the "Imperfect Victim" series.

Zhao Xiaoning

-Analysis-

BEIJING — Seeing the trailer for Imperfect Victim on TV was a harrowing experience: on a screen that is usually used as a backdrop, the face of an overwhelmed girl suddenly appears, along with several keywords, including "power imbalance." The advertisement explains that a drama about sexual assault in the workplace is being broadcast on Beijing Satellite Television and multiple other channels. It looks from the spot like a repeatedly banned subject is diving straight into the drama.

The story begins with a rape case reported anonymously by a third party. The victim, Zhao Xun, is a successful female assistant to the chairman of the board of directors, Cheng Gong. She is questioned by the police, her lawyer and the perpetrator of the crime, who sometimes affirms and sometimes denies the case.

During the course of the investigation, it was also discovered that after working in the company for only three months, she was transferred to a position that other colleagues had not reached despite working for several years, and that she had received luxury items purchased by Cheng Gong on the company's dime, which made her an "imperfect victim."

Cheng, as a perpetrator of sexual violence, was by no means unaware of Zhao’s conflict, or else he would not have covered up for himself by repeatedly bribing people who knew about it. Even he himself admitted that he likes Zhao not only because she is young, but also because he likes to see her "troubled face." However, Cheng still refuses to admit his crime on the grounds that Zhao did not resist.

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