Keite Camacho
Reporter - Agência Brasil

Brasília - The 1st National Seminar on the National Toll-Free Number to Denounce the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents got underway today (15) in Brasília. The aim of the seminar is to determine guidelines to guarantee that all cases reported to the service throughout the country are investigated. The participants are operators who work for the toll-free number and representatives of organizations to protect the rights of children and adolescents.

According to Cristina Albuquerque, coordinator of the Program to Combat the Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children and Adolescents, the sexual abuse and exploitation of children and adolescents are crimes often abetted by the silence of relatives and neighbors. In some instances, even when the complaint is registered, the practioner of the act moves to another city and continues to commit the same aggressions.

That is the reason that representatives of the federal government, municipal tutelary councils, the Public Defense Ministry, and state toll-free numbers want to integrate all the data banks on sexual abuse and exploitation in a single information system.

The federal government maintains a toll-free complaint service that guarantees the anonymity of the caller. The seminar, which is sponsored by the Special Secretariat for Human Rights (SDH), will end Friday (17).

Between May, 2003, and February of this year, 14.3 thousand complaints have been received. According to Socorro Tabosa, of the SDH, in cases of abuse even children have learned to call in complaints.

Translation: David Silberstein