Children’s literature to prevent sexual violence: material analysis

Abstract

Sexual violence against children is an alarming phenomenon, with serious implications for the development of the victimized people and which, therefore, must be the target of public prevention policies in the areas of health and education and a good pedagogical resource for this is the use of books. This qualitative, documentary-type study aimed to analyze children’s literature on preventing sexual violence against children. 12 books located on the commercial website amazon.com were analyzed, resulting in three thematic categories: (1) Content about sexual violence: the person who
committed the violence is usually a man, is close to the child, asks for secrecy and the child must defend himself and report it; (2) Aspects of sexual education: Biological- naming intimate parts of the body and notion of privacy, Religious-protection of a body that is God’s creation, and Human Rights - protection os the child as a family and State function and (3) Representation of diversity: emphasis on white bodies, few images of blackand yellow people and no indigenous people, prevalence of a middle socioeconomic class and predominance of non-disabled, thin and tall bodies. Most of the books use human characters (few are animals or abstract figures); some use rhymes to facilitate language and almost all present recommendations for adults who should follow the reading. Some books are more complete in content, while others are more superficial; some are biased toward more conservative values or normative, heterosexual family patterns. However, the message of identifying violence and means of protection are explicit in all of them. Despite some reservations, it is concluded that there are good materials that can be used and adapted for sexuality education processes in childhood.