From WSJ.com – Convicted of Rape, Brazilian Doctor Finds Way to Remain Free:
Back in 1997, Boadyr Veloso, a politically prominent 60-year-old physician, was becoming well known to people in the rundown barrio of Palmares. He was the man who paid young girls for sex, using the alias ‘Dr. Fernando.’
One of the girls, Gislaine Carvalho da Silva, 13 at the time, said in a statement to the district attorney that she agreed to a rendezvous with Dr. Fernando after friends promised she’d get $90, along with food and her favorite soft drink, guarana.
If you were operating under the assumption that the girl was fairly mature, that last detail would disabuse you of that notion — he promised her her favorite soft drink, guarana. Yeesh.
I didn’t realize that Brazil even had statutory rape laws. Anyway, Dr. Veloso didn’t do any time, because of an old (but not that old) legal clause:
What got Dr. Veloso off the hook wasn’t a newly discovered witness or a DNA test. It was that all seven young women had since married. Dr. Veloso avoided doing time because of Clause VIII of Article 107 of Brazil’s 1940 penal code, which says that a sex criminal’s punishment may be canceled if the victim subsequently weds.
The marriage provision harks back to a time when “a woman’s destiny was marriage, and a woman who was raped lost her chance to fulfill that destiny,” says Brazilian Congresswoman Iara Bernardi. “So marriage was seen as resolving the damage of sexual abuse.”