Social representation of rape. Roots and naturalization from the perspective of teachers from Riberalta

Context: In Bolivian law, statutory rape is considered a crime that occurs when an adult through seduction or deception has sexual intercourse with a person of either sex, over 14 and under 18 years of age. This problem has been studied with the Objective of finding the causes that originate it and how it affects adolescent women. The Method used has been based on the qualitative approach of the social representations of a group of teachers from Riberalta, Bolivia. The type of research has been explanatory, the technique for collecting information was a semi-structured interview of 11 open questions, carried out on 10 teachers from different educational units in Riberalta, selected under the modality of typical subjects, non-probabilistic sample, rescuing the social representations of their ideas, beliefs, attitudes, meanings and values, about statutory rape, finding as Results that poverty, cultural roots, loss of values and machismo are the main causes that originate statutory rape. Conclusion: All these factors reinforce each other, facilitating contexts in which power relations favour men and which over time have led to the naturalisation of statutory rape.