NGO welcomes male victims of sexual abuse and expands psychological care

Men who are victims of sexual violence in Brazil still have few options to deal with the trauma that abuse can bring. The country only has one non-governmental organization that has been serving this public for free since 2021, while in the public system service can take a long time.

A psychologist who has been working with sexual violence for almost 15 years, Denis Ferreira was the creator and one of the founders of Memórias Masculinas, an NGO that assists trans and cisgender men who were victims of sexual abuse.

“In 2020, I realized that if a man was a victim of sexual violence in Brazil, he has no place to turn. If he cannot afford to pay for a psychotherapy process, he will not have a space to talk about it,” he says. .

It was from there that the idea of ​​creating the organization was born, which has already welcomed more than a hundred people. Ferreira explains that he first looked for other initiatives of this type in the country, but did not identify any.

“Then I looked at models of organizations in the UK and Portugal and started to share this idea with close friends who work with research, care or prevention of sexual violence. They all fell in love with the idea”, he says.

Not having organizations for this purpose in Brazil was not an indication that the problem did not exist. Between 2009 and 2013 alone, reports of assaults on men and boys grew by about 290% — it was only from 2009 onwards that cases of rape against men could be registered.

The NGO was founded in September 2020, but began its services in 2021. At first, the victim only had access to one session with a volunteer professional.

“As we started with few volunteers, we were afraid of having a great demand and not having psychologists to attend to everyone. That way, we serve in an on-call format: it lasts from 30 minutes to 3 hours, but he is punctual”, explains the founder.

Over the months, it was seen that it would be possible to increase the number of sessions without harming new appointments — now, each man can have up to two conversations. It is possible to request assistance through the organization’s website and the sessions are virtual.

The NGO seeks financial support to carry out long-term therapeutic follow-up in the future.

For Ferreira, Memórias Masculinas is necessary both because there is no other organization of this type in the country, but also because public health and social services have bottlenecks in welcoming this population.

“We have the SUS and the social assistance system. In other words, there is a whole network organized against violations of rights, but we did not have any specific service for men.”

In the case of social assistance, there are Creas (Reference Centers for Social Assistance) that work in the context of violations of rights, offering services such as psychological and social care. However, Ferreira explains that, due to the high demand, men who are victims of sexual assault can take a long time to access these services.

“If a man comes to Creas and says ‘I was a victim of sexual violence and I want to talk about it’, he will go to the end of a line and will not get service”, he says.

In relation to SUS, there is the Caps (Psychosocial Care Center), specialized places with psychotherapy services. In the same way, however, the psychologist says that there may be a great difficulty in access by men who are sexually assaulted.

The Ministry of Health states that the SUS “offers comprehensive care for the victim’s health, regardless of gender, and supports any type of sexual violence”. The folder also says that the Caps “can compose this intersectoral care network, depending on the flow of reception to situations of violence established at the local and/or regional level”.

THE Sheet also contacted the Ministry of Citizenship to comment on the assistance to men who suffered sexual violence in Creas, but received no response until the publication of the report.

dealing with trauma

Sexual violence in men is rarer compared to that suffered by women. However, men who experience abuse also tend to experience it again and again over the years.

“In my doctorate, I am proving the thesis that a man who is a victim of sexual violence in childhood and adolescence is up to four times more likely to also suffer in adulthood. In other words, sexual violence against men has a repetitive character. “, says Ferreira, who does his research at the Santa Casa de Misericórdia in São Paulo.

THE Sheet talked to a man who had been a victim of sexual violence for years. He preferred not to have his identity revealed and, in this text, he will be called by the fictitious name of Luiz.

The first case occurred when he was between 3 and 4 years old. A cousin, who was on average ten years older than him, began to propose a game that simulated a doctor’s office.

Luiz’s cousin said that he felt pain in his genitals and that was where the situations of abuse took place. The episode was repeated several times until it was discovered by family members, who did not deal with the matter properly, causing Luiz to spend years in a situation of deep sadness.

Years later, when he was around 9 years old, Luiz suffered sexual violence again, this time by his older brother. He says that he was raped several times until he was old enough to be against his brother’s attitudes, who also physically and verbally abused him.

Finally, years later, the boy again went through a situation of sexual violence involving his father. It was an isolated case, but equally traumatic.

The traumas of these three abuses influenced aspects of Luiz’s life, such as his own sexuality, which, for a long time, was a dilemma. The situations were also never adequately addressed by the family and he didn’t feel confident talking about it with anyone for very long.

It was not until adulthood that he sought the help of a professional psychologist on the advice of his companion. He states that a therapeutic follow-up started earlier would have been important to deal with the events.

Talk little

Luiz’s difficulty in approaching the subject is not an isolated fact. Ferreira cites data from the Portuguese NGO Quebrar o Silêncio, which assists male victims of abusers, where it was estimated that a man takes an average of 25 years to talk about this trauma.

There are some factors that explain this phenomenon. “The first is the patriarchal and sexist culture that makes the man move away from his feelings and not assume a place of weakness or fragility”, says Ferreira.

For this reason, men usually do not put themselves in a victim situation. “He needs to assume that position of being strong and virile, even if he is in a position of aggression,” he continues.

Another explanation is the family’s difficulty in recognizing situations of sexual aggression, which tend to happen within their own environment. The silence further worsens the victim’s situation.

“A study indicates that the fact that boys talk less about it can make the violence more lasting, because the aggressor realizes that he will not be notified, so he continues performing the acts”, says the psychologist.