Gender and generation perspectives in the narratives of sexually abused women in childhood *

ABSTRACT Objective: to analyze the narratives of sexually abused women in childhood, identifying issues related to gender and generation. Method: descriptive research with a qualitative approach, based on 214 reports selected from the Brazilian campaign #primeiroassedio (first harassment), which took place on Twitter social network, collected from a structured instrument. Thematic content analysis was used. Results: girls were the main victims of sexual abuse. The perpetrators were mostly male and people they knew. Five categories emerged from the narratives: Sexual abuse in the aggressors’ discourse; The child as the object of sexual pleasure; Violated childhood; Victims’ guilty feelings; and Repercussions of sexual abuse experienced in childhood. Conclusion: sexual abuse often occurs in the family context and, even if sometimes veiled, the submission of girls’ power in gender relations and of children in generation relationships is evident. Analyzing sexual abuse under the categories of gender and generation contributes to an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon, directing practices more effectively to their coping.


Method
This is a descriptive research of a qualitative approach, based on reports from the users of a social network, Twitter, which establishes momentary connections. Its users use the "#" (hashtag) to highlight a subject in a tweet, which consists of a message with a maximum of 140 characters.
Tweets that have the same label can be grouped and searchable on a specific topic 1  For the collection and systematization of the data, a structured instrument was used, containing the number of the tweet, the victim sex and age, the location of the aggression, the relationship between the aggressor and the victim, the date and time of publication, and full report.
A total of 530 tweets, identified by codes from T1 (tweet 1) to T530 (tweet 530), were collected. For the research, 214 tweets were selected, considering the inclusion criteria: reports of women; age between four and nine years at the time of sexual abuse; presenting the location of the aggression; the aggressor's sex; and relationship of the aggressor with the victim. We excluded publications that did not refer to personal reports of sexual violence and repeated messages.
The minimum age at the time of sexual abuse was established as four years due to the possibility of users remembering and describing the situation more accurately.
Studies carried out with children allegedly sexually abused to verify the potentiality of the forensic interview to investigate the crimes also presented four years as the minimum age of participants (8)(9) .
The reports of the selected tweets were submitted to thematic content analysis (10) . The stages of pre-analysis, exploration of the material, treatment of results, interpretation and inference were performed.
The categories of analysis were Gender and Generation, anchored in the framework of historical and dialectical materialism, established by the researchers due to the potential for capturing and interpreting the researched social phenomena. * Available from: https://about.twitter.com/pt/company/brand-assets Fornari LF, Sakata-So KN, Egry EY, Fonseca RMGS.
In this context, the gender category is based on the difference between men and women, which composes the social relations and the construction of meanings on the relations of power in society (11) . The generation category, in turn, is predicated on beyond the age of social subjects, insofar as it defines the social statutes of a particular group through political and ideological similarities, located in time and space (6) .
This research did not require approval from the Research Ethics Committee because it used data from a social network, of free access on the Internet.

The Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative
Research (COREQ) guide was applied in order to verify the scientific quality of the research. This guide was adapted according to the specificity of the research database. In this way, the criteria of the second domain were partially met and those of the third domain were completely met.

Results
In the data collected, a total of 214 Brazilian women reported having been sexually abused in childhood.
It should be noted that, due to the use of tweets, it was not possible to characterize these participants. Violations had occurred when they were between four and nine years of age. Approximately one quarter (27.57%) of the participants stated that the situation of violence had occurred at the age of eight; 21.02%, at nine years of age; 16.82%, at seven years of age; 15.88%, at six years of age; 10.74%, at five years of age; and 7.94% at four years of age. The number of cases increased as age increased.
Concerning the location of the aggressions, 48.13% of the participants reported it was at home and 13.55% in the street. The other participants mentioned the school, the church, the park, the beach, the farm, the pool, the shop, the bakery, the mall and the bus. We found that child sexual abuse is more frequent in the home environment.
Regarding the authors of the aggressions, 97.66% were male. The age of the aggressors was not reported in 84.11% of the tweets. When reported, the victims informed that the perpetrators of sexual abuse were older than the victims. As for the type of relationship with the aggressors, 22.42% were unknown persons. The other participants were victims of known persons, such as family members and friends of the family.
The analysis of the reports allowed the emergence of five empirical categories: "Sexual abuse in the aggressors' discourse"; "The child as an object of sexual pleasure"; "Violated childhood"; "Victims' guilty feelings"; and "Repercussions of sexual abuse experienced in childhood". The reports revealed that the aggressors expressed desire for the female body during the childhood of the victims and their adolescence was the moment for the consummation of that desire. Such a fact leads us to believe that the aggressors see the child being prepared to become an adult and to "be ready" to be "attacked." It is as if in the phase of adolescence or of adult life the woman was allowed by society to be violated, which, in childhood, would be socially condemned.
The speeches also revealed the child's reification ("being ready") and a wild disposition ("attack"), in which the adult man is the predator and the strong element, while the child is the prey, the weak and helpless element of the relationship. In the category Violated childhood, the speeches revealed that aggressors took advantage of the naivety and innocence of children to engage in sexual abuse:

Discussion
The analysis of the reports of Brazilian women who experienced sexual abuse in childhood confirms that the phenomenon is determined by unequal relations of generation associated with the constructions of gender roles, which influence patterns for the female and male since childhood (11) .
The differences between the generations and the genders, which underlie the manifestations of violence in childhood, are results of the established asymmetry of power between the female and the male (intergender relationship) and between the child and the adult (intergenerational relationship) (6)(7)12) .
The fact that the participants had suffered sexual abuse between the ages of four and nine, especially in the domestic context and by men they knew, is similar to that found in other research with sexually abused children and adolescents. It was identified that the first violations were recorded in the pre-school and school phases and that the perpetrators were predominantly male and known by the victims (13) .
This aspect demonstrates the submission and dependence of the victims in relation to the perpetrators, most of whom are responsible for the victim's subsistence. The reports published in the #primeiroassedio (first harassment) campaign also revealed that the manifestation of sexual desire by men is not limited to adult women, but extends to girls, arousing greed, situation that incurs in abuse. Therefore, the female body has become the object of sexual desire since childhood, with the foreshadowing that, at some point of its development, it can be sexually dominated.
When the victim of sexual violence is a child, there is also the difficulty to understand the abusive relationship. It is well known that children who have been sexually abused experience the negative effects of this throughout life. The most common manifestations are inadequate school performance, psychological problems (depression, anxiety, suicide attempt and post-traumatic stress disorder) and personal relationships. They can also be victims in other relationships that occur in different spaces of society and present difficulties in following socially imposed norms (7,12,23) .
A study of 222 men and 660 women that had been victims of child sexual abuse found that girls were more