Law’s Lolita Paradox: Translating ‘Childhood’ In Statutory Rape Jurisprudence

Abstract

This article addresses how normative views about ‘childhood’ are translated into statutory rape legislation and court judgments at the highest legal level in Brazil, in the Federal Supreme Court. The article draws on literature on the sociology of childhood to trace how courts translate societal narratives in the construction of agency, vulnerability and victimhood with regard to children and sexuality. Analysing historical and contemporary statutory rape legislation and Federal Supreme Court decisions over a 20-year period, we argue that the legal subjecthood of child victims of sexual crimes is constructed at the intersection of prevailing norms in society about childhood and moralising discourses about women’s sexuality. Deviating from norms about childhood results in the prominence of women’s sexuality and sexual desire in legal and judicial argumentation, situating children in a legal-semantic space in which they are simultaneously denied the agency that characterises adulthood and the special protection that compensates for this lack of agency in childhood protection laws. We refer to this legal situation and friction as the ‘Lolita paradox’ of statutory rape jurisprudence.

Notes

1 Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov, Lolita (Knopf 1992) 20.

2 Supremo Tribunal Federal [Supreme Federal Court of Brazil], HC 73662 MG (21 May 1996) (Marco Aurélio DJ) (HC 73662 MG) (emphasis added).

3 James Boyd White, Justice as Translation: An Essay in Cultural and Legal Criticism (University of Chicago Press 1990). See also Sharon R Ullman, Sex Seen: The Emergence of Modern Sexuality in America (University of California Press 1997); Wendy Larcombe, Compelling Engagements: Feminism, Rape Law and Romance Fiction (Federation Press 2005).

4 Eleonora Zicari Costa de Brito, Justiça e Gênero: Uma História Da Justiça de Menores em Brasília (1960–1990) [Justice and Gender: A History of Juvenile Justice in Brazil (1960–1990)] (Editora Universidade de Brasília 2007).

5 Lúcia Gonçalves De Freitas and Liliana Cabral Bastos, ‘Sexual Abuse in Proceedings of Gender-Based Violence in the Brazilian Judicial System’ (2019) 13(2) Gender and Language 153; Ulrika Andersson, Monika Edgren, Lena Karlsson and Gabriella Nilsson (eds) Rape Narratives in Motion (Palgrave 2019); Zsuzsanna Adler, Rape on Trial (Routledge and Kegan Paul 1987); Joanna Bourke, Rape: A History from 1860 to the Present (Virago 2007); Clare McGlynn and Vanessa E Munro (eds) Rethinking Rape Law: International and Comparative Perspectives (Routledge 2010); Joan McGregor, ‘The Legal Heritage of the Crime of Rape’ in Jennifer Brown and Sandra Walklate (eds) Handbook on Sexual Violence (Routledge 2012) at 69.

6 We define agency as the capacity to act, including to make considered decisions based on practical evaluation, within particular concrete life circumstances; see Mustafa Emirbayer and Ann Mische, ‘What Is Agency?’ (1998) 103(4) American Journal of Sociology 962.

7 Keith S Rosenn, ‘Judicial Review in Latin America’ (1974) 35(4) Ohio State Law Journal 785.

8 Constitution of the Federative Republic of Brazil, ch 1 art 5 (LXVIII). Moreover, according to article 5 (LXXVII), ‘habeas corpus and habeas data proceedings and, under the terms of the law, acts necessary to the exercise of citizenship are free of charge’.

9 Keith S Rosenn, ‘Procedural Protection of Constitutional Rights in Brazil’ (2011) 59(4) The American Journal of Comparative Law 1009, 1016.

10 As above.

11 Deborah Alley and others, ‘Race-Based Sexual Stereotypes Influence Ratings of Child Victims in Sexual Abuse Cases’ (2019) 2(3) International Journal on Child Maltreatment 287; Bette L Bottoms, Suzanne L Davis and Michelle A Epstein, ‘Effects of Victim and Defendant Race on Jurors’ Decisions in Child Sexual Abuse Cases’ (2004) 34(1) Journal of Applied Social Psychology 1; Rachel A Feinstein, When Rape Was Legal: The Untold History of Sexual Violence During Slavery (Routledge 2018). On the role of race on understandings of legal minority and age of consent, see Ishita Pande, Sex, Law, and the Politics of Age: Child Marriage in India, 1891–1937 (Cambridge University Press 2020); Elizabeth Thornberry, ‘The Problem of African Girlhood: Raising the Age of Consent in the Cape of Good Hope, 1893–1905’ (2020) 38(1) Law and History Review 219.

12 Stanley R Bailey, ‘Group Dominance and the Myth of Racial Democracy: Antiracism Attitudes in Brazil’ (2004) 69(5) American Sociological Review 728; France Winddance Twine, Racism in a Racial Democracy: The Maintenance of White Supremacy in Brazil (Rutgers University Press 1997).

13 Evandro Piza Duarte, ‘O Debate Sobre as Relações Raciais no Brasil e seus Reflexo no Ordenamento Jurídico Brasileiro’ [The Debate on Racial Relations and Its Consequences in the Brazilian Legal System] (2004) 1 Universitas Jus 110.

14 Marcos Vinícius Lustosa Queiroz, Constitucionalismo Brasileiro e o Atlântico Negro: A Experiência Constitucional de 1823 diante da Revolução Haitiana [Brazilian Constitutionalim and the Black Atlantic: The Constituent Experience of 1823 in the Face of the Haitian Revolution] (Lumen Juris 2021, 3rd edn); Flavia Rios, ‘O Protesto Negro no Brasil Contemporâneo (1978-2010)’ [The Black Protest in Contemporary Brazil (1978–2010)] (2012) 85 Lua Nova: Revista de Cultura e Politica [New Moon: Journal of Culture and Politics] 41.

15 Código Penal [Penal Code] (Brazil) 7 December 1940.

16 Lei n 12.015, de 7 de Agosto de 2009 [Law No 12015 of 7 August 2009] (Brazil).

17 Anthony G Amsterdam and Jerome Bruner, Minding the Law: How Courts Rely on Storytelling, and How Their Stories Change the Way We Understand Law – And Ourselves (Harvard University Press 2000); Peter Brooks, ‘Narrativity of the Law’ (2002) 14(1) Law and Literature 1; Lynn S Chancer, High-Profile Crimes: When Legal Cases Become Social Causes (Chicago University Press 2005); Kristin Bumiller, In an Abusive State: How Neoliberalism Appropriated the Feminist Movement against Sexual Violence (Duke University Press 2008).

18 Ulrika Andersson, ‘Harmed Selves Harming Others: A Vulnerability Approach to the Criminal Justice System’ in Martha Albertson Fineman, Ulrika Andersson and Titti Mattsson (eds) Privatization, Vulnerability and Social Responsibility: A Comparative Perspective (Routledge 2016) at 290; Martha Albertson Fineman, ‘The Vulnerable Subject: Anchoring Equality in the Human Condition’ (2008) 20(1) Yale Journal of Law and Feminism 1; Nicola Lacey, ‘Unspeakable Subjects, Impossible Rights: Sexuality, Integrity and Criminal Law’ (1997) 8(2) Women: A Cultural Review 143; Rebecka Stringer, ‘Vulnerability after Wounding: Feminism, Rape Law and the Difference’ (2013) 42(3) SubStance 148.

19 Brito, above note 4; Susan Ehrlich, Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent (Routledge 2001).

20 Wendy Larcombe, ‘The “Ideal” Victim v Successful Rape Complaints: Not What You Might Expect’ (2002) 10(2) Feminist Legal Studies 131.

21 Chris Jenks, Childhood (Routledge 2005, 2nd edn); Michael G Wyness, Childhood and Society (Macmillan Education 2019, 3rd edn); Paula S Fass, ‘Children and Globalization’ (2003) 36(4) Journal of Social History 963; Göran Therborn, ‘Child Politics: Dimensions and Perspectives’ (1996) 3(1) Childhood 29; Martin Woodhead and Heather Montgomery, Understanding Childhood: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Wiley Press 2003).

22 See, for example, Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: 1 (Penguin Classics 2020).

23 Graham Vickers, Chasing Lolita: How Popular Culture Corrupted Nabokov’s Little Girl All over Again (Chicago Review Press 2008); see also Brito, above note 4.

24 See, for instance, John Eekelaar, ‘The Emergence of Children’s Rights’ (1986) 6(2) Oxford Journal of Legal Studies 161; Andrew Bainham, ‘The Privatisation of the Public Interest in Children’ (1990) 53(2) Modern Law Review 206.

25 Allison James and Adrian L James, Constructing Childhood: Theory, Policy and Social Practice (Palgrave Macmillan 2004) 80.

26 Niklas Luhmann, ‘Law as a Social System’ (1989) 83(1–2) Northwestern University Law Review 136.

27 Jenks, above note 21 at 6; Wyness, above note 21 at 8; see also Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life (Vintage Books 1965).

28 Vikki Bell, ‘Governing Childhood: Neo-Liberalism and the Law’ (1993) 22(3) Economy and Society 390, 391.

29 Jenks, above note 21 at 12.

30 As above at 4.

31 Fass, above note 21 at 963.

32 See, for example, Jenks, above note 21; Wyness, above note 21; Woodhead and Montgomery, above note 21.

33 Karen Smith, ‘Producing Governable Subjects: Images of Childhood Old and New’ (2011) 19(1) Childhood 24.

34 Jenks, above note 21 at 64.

35 Woodhead and Montgomery, above note 21 at 63.

36 Jenks, above note 21 at 63.

37 Smith, above note 33 at 26.

38 As above at 54.

39 Lutz DH Sauerteig, ‘Loss of Innocence: Albert Mol, Sigmund Freud and the Invention of Childhood Sexuality around 1900’ (2012) 56(2) Medical History 156.

40 See, for instance, Vickers, above note 23.

41 Woodhead and Montgomery, above note 21 at 65.

42 Jenks, above note 21 at 64–5.

43 As above at 68.

44 Therborn, above note 21 at 29–30.

45 Mariana de Moraes Silveira, ‘Direito, Ciência Do Social: O Lugar dos Juristas Nos Debates do Brasil dos Anos 1930 e 1940’ [Law, Science of the Social: The Place of Jurists in the Debates of Brazil in the 1930s and 1940s] (2016) 29(58) Estudos Históricos 441.

46 Decreto No 17.943-A de 12 de Outubro de 1927 [Decree No 17.943-A of 12 October 1927] (Brazil) art 1.

47 As above at art 113.

48 Nina Schneider, ‘Origins of Child Rights Governance: The Example of Early Child Labour Legislation in the United States and Brazil’ (2019) 26(3) Childhood 289, 295.

49 Linde Lindkvist, ‘The Child Subject of Human Rights’ in Danielle Celermajer and Alexander Lefebvre (eds) The Subject of Human Rights (Stanford University Press 2020) at 211; see also Michael DA Freeman, ‘Introduction: Rights, Ideology and Children’ in Michael DA Freeman and Philip E Veerman (eds) The Ideologies of Children’s Rights (Brill 1992) 3.

50 Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted on 20 November 1989, 1577 UNTS 3 (entered into force 2 September 1990) art 12(1) (‘UNCRC’); see also Therborn, above note 19 at 33.

51 Wyness, above note 21 at 36–7.

52 Therborn, above note 21 at 36.

53 Lindkvist, above note 49. Prior to the UNCRC, other attempts at codifying children’s rights included the Geneva Declaration of the Rights of the Child, adopted by the League of Nations in 1924, the 1959 UN Declaration on the Rights of the Child, and rules on protecting children in international labour law and international humanitarian law. However, as Lindkvist notes at 212, these legal instruments ‘did not envision children as active, rights-bearing subjects. Their general objective was to spell out standards that would help to protect vulnerable and innocent children against suffering caused by adult exploitation and neglect or, more broadly, by the direct and structural violence of war, unregulated labor, and poverty’.

54 As above at 212.

55 Lei n 8.069, de 13 de Julho 1990 (Estatuto da Criança e do Adolescente) [Law No 8.069 of 13 July 1990 (Child and Adolescent Statute)] (Brazil) (‘ECA’).

56 Airi Macias Sacco, Ana Paula Lazzaretti de Souza and Sílvia Helena Koller, ‘Child and Adolescent Rights in Brazil’ (2015) 23(4) International Journal of Children’s Rights 818, 820.

57 UNCRC, above note 50 at art 3(1).

58 ECA, above note 55 at art 17.

59 Jean Zermatten, ‘The Best Interests of the Child Principle: Literal Analysis and Function’ (2010) 18(4) International Journal of Children’s Rights 483, 485.

60 John Tobin, ‘Courts and the Construction of Childhood: A New Way of Thinking’ in Michael Freeman (ed) Law and Childhood Studies: Current Legal Issues (Oxford University Press 2012) at 55, 58–9.

61 As above at 60.

62 Lei n 10.406, de 10 de Janeiro de 2002 (Código Civil) [Law No 10406 of 10 January 2002 (Civil Code)] (Brazil) art 3.

63 Decreto-Lei n 2848, de 7 de Dezembro de 1940 (Código Penal) [Law No 2848 of 7 December 1940 (Penal Code)] (Brazil) art 213 (1940 Penal Code).

64 Ibid art 224.

65 Dorothy Q Thomas and Michele E Beasley, ‘Domestic Violence as a Human Right’ (1993) 15(1) Human Rights Quarterly 36, 55.

66 Codigo Criminal do Imperio do Brasil [Brazilian Penal Code] (Brazil) 16 December 1830 (emphasis added).

67 Maria Helena Fávero, Psicologia de Gênero: Psicobiografia, Sociocultura e Transformações [Gender Psychology: Psychobiography, Socioculture and Transformations] (Editora UFPR 2010) 85.

68 Decreto n 847, de 11 de Outubro de 1890 [Código Penal] [Decree No 847 of 11 October 1890] (Brazil) art 266.

69 Mary E Odem, Delinquent Daughters: Protecting and Policing Adolescent Female Sexuality in the United States, 1885–1920 (University of North Carolina Press 1995, 2nd edn) 2.

70 Stephen Robertson, ‘Age of Consent Law and the Making of Modern Childhood in New York City, 1886–1921’ (2002) 35(4) Journal of Social History 781.

71 Odem, above note 69. Odem writes at 65,

Although the age-of-consent law was intended to ‘protect’ young women, the prosecution of statutory rape cases proved to be a punitive process for them as well as for the male defendants. Young women and girls were frequently confined in the country detention home for delinquent youth to await court hearings. While in detention, all girls were subjected to compulsory pelvic exams to determine whether they were virgins. If the physician found evidence of sexual experience (a ruptured hymen or relaxed vaginal opening), the girls faced rigorous questioning about their sexual activities by female probation officers, who pressured them to reveal the names of their sexual partners, then turned these names over to the police. (emphasis added).

72 1940 Penal Code (n 61) art 215.

73 1940 Penal Code (n 61) arts 217–18.

74 Lei n 12.015, de 7 de Agosto de 2009 [Law No 12015 of 7 August 2009] (Brazil).

75 1940 Penal Code (n 61) art 217-A.

76 Exposicão de motivos [Explanatory Memorandum], Lei n 12.015, de 7 de Agosto de 2009 (Brazil).

77 Brazil, Congresso Nacional [National Congress] Relatório Final da Comissão Mista Parlamentar de Inquérito: Criada por meio do Requerimento n° 02, de 2003-CN, ‘com a finalidade investigar as situações de violência e redes de exploração sexual de crianças e adolescentes no Brasil’ [Final Report of the Joint Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry: Created through Request n°02 of 2003-CN, ‘with the purpose of investigating situations of violence and networks of sexual exploitation of children and adolescents in Brazil’] (2004) <https://www2.senado.leg.br/bdsf/bitstream/handle/id/84599/RF200401.pdf?sequence=5>.

78 HC 73662 MG, above note 2.

79 The two bills are: Projeto de Lei do Senado 111 de 1996 [Senate Bill No 111, 1996] (Federal Senate of Brazil) <https://legis.senado.leg.br/diarios/ver/7200?sequencia=59> (at 8.803); Projeto de Lei do Senado 135 de 1996 [Senate Bill No 135, 1996] (Federal Senate of Brazil): <https://legis.senado.leg.br/diarios/ver/7298?sequencia=55> (at 10.501).

80 These cases are Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 75.414-7 MG (Min Maurício Corrêa) (24 June 1997, 2nd term) (HC 75.414-7 MG); Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 93.261-1 Rio Grande do Sul (Min Carmen Lúcia) (19 February 2008, 1st term); Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 101.456 MG (Min Eros Grau) (9 March 2010, 2nd term); Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 97.052 Paraná (Min Dias Toffoli) (18 August 2011, 1st term) (HC 97.052 Paraná); Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 111.159 Bahia (Min Teori Zavascki) (24 September 2013, 2nd term).

81 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 74700–1 Paraná (Min Maurício Corrêa) (4 March 1997, 2nd term) 473.

82 As above at 472.

83 Leonardo Barreto Ferraz Gominho and Filipy Roberto da Silva, ‘A Relativização da Presunção de Vulnerabilidade dos Adolescentes como Forma de Adequação Social’ [The Relativisation of the Presumption of Vulnerability of Adolescents as a Form of Social Adequacy] Revista Jus (online) 25 August 2016 <https://jus.com.br/artigos/51614/a-relativizacao-da-presuncao-de-vulnerabilidade-dos-adolescentes-como-forma-de-adequacao-social> (last accessed 22 February 2022).

84 HC 73662 MG, above note 2 at 315.

85 Susan Ehrlich, Representing Rape: Language and Sexual Consent (Routledge 2001) 39–40; Susan Ehrlich, Diana Eades and Janet Ainsworth (eds) Discursive Constructions of Consent in the Legal Process (Oxford University Press 2016).

86 HC 73662 MG, above note 2 at 315–16.

87 As above at 320 (emphasis added).

88 As above at 332.

89 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 119.091 São Paulo (Min Carmen Lúcia) (10 December 2013, 2nd term) 5–6 (emphasis added) (HC 119.091 São Paulo).

90 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 74215–7 MG (Min Mauricio Correa) (24 September 1996, 2nd term) 558.

91 As above at 589.

92 Consider, for example, the following explanation: ‘In terms of alleging consent, the accused was constantly persuading the victim to the point of following her to school where she studied, despite him being a married man. In such cases, the presumption of innocence [sic] is operative without exaggerating the norm’s application’; compare HC 75.414-7, above note 80.

93 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 74580–6 São Paulo (Min Ilmar Galvão) (17 December 1996, 1st term).

94 As above.

95 As above.

96 HC 97.052 Paraná, above note 80.

97 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 99.897 Paraná (Min Eros Grau) (17 November 2009, 2nd term) 243.

98 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 94.818-9 MG (Min Ellen Gracie) (24 June 2008, 2nd term).

99 As above.

100 HC 119.091 São Paulo, above note 89.

101 As above at 394 (emphasis added).

102 Supremo Tribunal Federal, HC 105.558 Paraná (Min Rosa Weber) (22 May 2012, 1st term).