The Scholas Occurrentes Foundation, founded by Pope Francis, will carry out, together with the Government of Jalisco, a diagnosis of children and adolescents from Puerto Vallarta who have suffered child sexual exploitation.
The objective is to provide minors with alternatives for personal and professional development, as well as to find out what sidelined them or how they were linked to this practice.
The measure, which could begin in 2023, is part of the agreements reached after the visit of Governor Enrique Alfaro to the Supreme Pontiff, last October, at his residence in Santa Marta, located in Rome, Italy.
Alberto Esquer, head of the Secretariat of the Social Assistance System (SSAS), an agency that will work on the diagnosis, also attended this meeting.
“Puerto Vallarta is one of the municipalities with the greatest problem (of child sexual exploitation) at a national and international level (…) We have to make an extraordinary fight in terms of security, awareness, and identification of the real problem,” Esquer pointed out.
“Definitely this problem has grown in recent years (…) We can not put a blindfold on our eyes.”
Esquer stated that Scholas will have its specialists, and that the Government of Jalisco will provide the budget for the diagnosis, although he did not specify how much it will be.
“They will be arriving in the following weeks (during November) to tell us how many pedagogues we need, and how many researchers, and there they will be asking us about costs, which are mainly logistics, food, hotel, salaries, and transportation”, detailed the official.
According to data from the Jalisco State Prosecutor’s Office, in 2019 there were 137 cases of child sexual abuse, in 2020 there were 131 and in 2021 158 cases.
Between 2020 and 2021, there was an increase of 20.6 percent.
The Scholas Occurrentes Foundation is a personal project of Pope Francis to give a voice to young people in search of a culture of encounter, peace, and social inclusion through three axes: technology, art, and sports. It was launched on August 13, 2013, with a match between the Italian and Argentine soccer teams at the Olympic Stadium in Rome.
