According to Bruno Pedro, head of the Department for the Prevention of Violence and Protection of Children's Rights at the National Children's Institute (INAC), the number of cases of belief in witchcraft or violence against children is likely to increase as a result of the authorities' work to raise awareness about the need to report cases.
On Tuesday, Novo Jornal reported that a nine-year-old child was handed over by her mother to a pastor to remove evil spirits, and was subjected to various corporal punishments, which were reported to the authorities by the child's father.
Bruno Pedro stressed that the INAC SOS-Child service has been facilitating reports, which are now anonymous, without requiring the presence of people, as was previously the case.
The head stressed that INAC has been conducting research on cultural beliefs and practices that encourage violence against children, concluding that a lack of knowledge about certain situations, such as autism, leads people to commit these acts.
“People often abandon their children, either because they are uninformed or because they do not have the skills to deal with these situations, and they are much more likely to abdicate them, accusing them of witchcraft, because they have developed some pathology or have less than normal behavior,” he said.
The official stressed that there is a tendency to blame certain situations in families on the children, often by people linked to religious sects, who manage to convince their relatives.
According to Bruno Pedro, these people manage to make the less informed believe that any “abnormal behavior” of the child is due to the fact that he or she is a witch.
“As a result, children are subjected to certain rituals to be freed from the so-called evil spirits, they are often abandoned, they are victims of violence, in cases where all this does not result in the death of the child,” Bruno Pedro stressed, admitting that there are still people who do not report these cases.
