Great controversy in Brazil over the acquittal of a 35-year-old man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl

A Brazilian court’s decision to acquit a 35-year-old man accused of raping a 12-year-old girl—arguing that they were “two young lovers” united by “a consensual emotional bond”—has sparked intense controversy and reignited the debate about the normalization of child marriage. Even when the law punishes the practice, as it does in Brazil, the difficulty of combating it is evident. The Brazilian Penal Code considers any sexual relationship with a minor under 14 a crime, yet that was insufficient to prevent the judges from invoking jurisprudence to make their case. Last Friday they issued the controversial ruling, with two male judges voting in favor and the only female judge on the panel voting against.

Some 34,000 Brazilian girls under the age of 14, mostly poor and Black, declared themselves as “married” in the census, even though marriage before the age of 16 is illegal. Another stark statistic that helps illustrate the magnitude of the problem is that 38 babies are born every day to mothers under the age of 14 in this country of 211 million inhabitants.

The case that has now sparked controversy first came to the attention of authorities in 2024 when the 12-year-old girl, who lives in Indianapolis, a small town of 6,000 residents in the state of Minas Gerais, stopped attending school. They soon discovered that, with her mother’s consent, she had gone to live with a man almost three times her age. Brazilian law considers that before the age of 14, no one has the capacity to consent to a sexual relationship. Therefore, the child protection agency notified the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which filed charges against the man and the girl’s mother.

In the first trial, he was sentenced to nine years in prison for the rape of a vulnerable person, while the victim’s mother was acquitted. He appealed and has since been exonerated.

And one more fact: the controversial ruling is far from an exception. The UOL website has compiled nine acquittals handed down in 2024 and 2025 in cases against adults accused of raping children under 14, tried in various courts, including the Supreme Court itself. In all nine of these cases, the presiding judge was a man.

Amid this controversy, Luciana Temer, president of the Liberta Institute and one of Brazil’s most recognized activists in the fight against child abuse, has emphasized that changing the law is not enough. “We have to change people’s mindsets because this is a deeply rooted cultural issue,” she warned. A few years ago, the wedding of a 65-year-old mayor to a teenager who had turned 16 the day before sparked a powerful wave of outrage.

The most recent case has worked a miracle of sorts amidst Brazil’s political polarization, with eight months to go before the presidential and parliamentary elections. The ruling has been harshly criticized by both the left and the right. It must be one of the very few issues that have managed to bring together the two lawmakers who embody ideological extremes: the ultraconservative Bolsonaro supporter Nikolas Ferreira, 29, and Erika Hilton, a 33-year-old transgender member of parliament from the Socialism and Liberty Party, the party of the assassinated Marielle Franco.

The National Council of Justice, an official body that oversees the judiciary, has requested explanations from the Minas Gerais court that issued the acquittal. The Ministries of Human Rights and Women condemned the ruling in a joint statement, recalling the 34,000 girls who described to census takers living in conjugal unions.

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