Thread: COMIC BOOK ON RAPE AIMED AT YOUNG LATINAS

Comic Book On Rape Aimed At Young Latinas
Virginia Health Department Uses Fotonovela To Educate Teens On Statutory Rape


Robert Franklin of the Virginia Department of Health said educating Latino immigrants about statutory rape laws required a more narrowed approach. "I can't just translate 'Isn't she a little young?' into Spanish," he said.

QUOTE

"Often immigrants come from countries with few or no statutory rape laws" and "don't know that a four-year difference or a six-year difference would (have) a legal implication for them."

RICHMOND, Va., March 12, 2007

(AP) It starts out like most fotonovelas, Latino comic books with themes often centered on love and betrayal: Teenage "Yaneth" is at a picnic when she spots handsome, raven-haired "David." She nabs his number and afterward, playfully sends him a text message.

A few pages later, Yaneth isn't smiling. She's in a car alone with David, who's actually a man in his late 20s. He's demanding sex and the 14-year-old is scared.

The Virginia Department of Health hopes readers will want to find out what happens next to Yaneth, and to many real life Latina teens like her.

They've spent two years developing the comic book to combat statutory rape among Hispanic girls — put at higher risk, some say, by limited understanding of American laws and cultural mores condoning May-December relationships.

"Gracias Papi: A fotonovela about a young woman, an older guy and a loving father" will be distributed across Virginia starting in April. Franklin already has received calls from interested health care workers in Illinois, Arizona, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Florida and Tennessee.

The effort stems from Virginia's "Isn't she a little young?" statutory rape campaign, a 2004 project employing everything from billboards to napkins bearing the provocative question.

Robert Franklin, a health department male outreach coordinator, immediately got requests to translate the materials into Spanish.

"Getting males to challenge their peers about having sex with teens is hard in any culture," said Franklin, who felt a one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't work. "I can't just translate 'Isn't she a little young?' into Spanish."

Franklin instead began targeting Latino men through Spanish-language radio ads. When he realized he was only addressing part of the problem, Franklin searched for ways to reach Latina teens.

He turned to fotonovelas.

Popularized in Latin America, fotonovelas use photographs of live actors instead of drawings, and illustrate soap opera-like stories. The books have caught on among health care agencies as a hip alternative to stiff brochures about diabetes risks and other medical issues.

Franklin's tackling a tougher topic. A white male who speaks no Spanish, he's boldly challenging the older man-younger woman relationships many Latino immigrants consider normal.

Asks Yaneth's mother in one panel, speaking to her own older husband: "How is this different than when we got married?"

Latinas led the nation in teen births in 2004, with 82.6 per 1,000 girls ages 15-19, according to September data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national birth rate per thousand girls that age was 41.1.

CDC data shows Mexican and Puerto Rican girls at an especially high risk.

Both groups have settled in Virginia. The state had double-digit drops in births among black and white girls ages 15-19 from 1990 to 2003, while births rose 50 percent among Latinas in that age group, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy.

Health officials say it's hard to figure out who's fathering their children.

In 2005, state police made 127 arrests for statutory rape, defined in state law as carnal knowledge of a minor under age 18.

But experts warn that statutory rape is often unreported. Many Latina teens, meanwhile, are reluctant to identify their children's fathers — often an indicator of an inappropriate sexual relationship, Franklin said.

"The younger the female, the less likely people were to give the father's age," said Franklin, who studied hospital delivery forms to estimate over half of Latina teen mothers in Virginia were sexually active with adult men.

Most Latinos don't condone "viejos verdes," Spanish slang for older men who prey on girls.

But in the rural Latin-American towns where many immigrants originate, it's not uncommon for a man to date a girl, especially if he's a family friend, said Carmina Oaks, executive director of the Latino Resource Center, in Jackson, Wyo. Police there have seen more than a dozen statutory rape cases in recent years, most involving Latina victims.

Oaks organized a community workshop on the topic, and is interested in Virginia's fotonovela.

"In a lot of places, it doesn't matter the age," said Oaks, who's Mexican. "If it's your best friend's son, he could be maybe 10 years difference, the family are OK with that."

In the fotonovela, David works for Yaneth's dad.

"Often immigrants come from countries with few or no statutory rape laws" and "don't know that a four-year difference or a six-year difference would (have) a legal implication for them," Oaks said.

Virginia officials have worked hard to make the fotonovela something Latinas will embrace.

They incorporated text messaging, "Spanglish" phrases and modern names like Yaneth (a Spanish take on Janet) to recreate the average Latina youth's environment, said Paz Ochs, a Richmond Hispanic liaison who helped create the 13-page, color booklet.

"We wanted something that would be appealing," said Ochs, who's part Dominican. "There's some people that might not realize that this is even against the law."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/03/ ... 7747.shtml

"Gracias Papi: A fotonovela about a young woman, an older guy and a loving father" will be distributed across Virginia starting in April.

CLICK HERE TO SEE ACTUAL COMIC BOOK
http://vdh.state.va.us/news/pdf/Fotonovela.pdf

This project was developed, by the Virginia Department of Health with funding from the Virginia Department of Social Services


A comic book being distributed in Virginia is titled "Gracias Papa!," Spanish for "Thanks Dad!" It's the story of a young woman, an older guy and a loving father, and is aimed at preventing statutory rape.

WHAT IS THE FOTO-NOVELA?

The illustrated novel, or foto-novela, also known as historietas, has recently enjoyed a burst of mainstream popularity in the United States. (Technically, the foto-novela is illustrated with photos while the historieta employs drawings, but the two terms often are used interchangeably.) These “comic books” with complex perspectives and dark imagery have had a long history and far-reaching impact within the Latino and Chicano communities in the U.S., as well as Mexico and Latin America, where they continue to thrive as a mainstay of popular culture.

In Mexico, the form has its roots in turn of the century historietas, which were originally illustrated cartoon versions of popular works of European literature. Published in numerous episodes, these stories eventually gave way to original series that focused on contemporary Mexican life. Popular to this day, the modern historieta ranges from educational to political, entertainment to pornography, and everything in between. Print runs for these series can run as high as 250,000 or more, reaching an enormous reading public.

In the United States, the foto-novela/historieta has a distinct manifestation in the Chicano/Latino community, providing a unique idiom through which the community addresses social concerns using a highly innovative visual language. As a popular and flexible form, the foto-novela has been used in increasingly fresh ways by visual artists and writers to address important social issues within the Chicano/Latino community. Activists and religious groups have also turned to the form as an organizational tool for outreach, education and proselytizing.

The graphically illustrated historieta and the photographed foto-novela use deceptively simple didactic stories. The plots are usually high melodrama, with classic "rags-to-riches" situations, or secretive, forbidden love between two people from different social classes. Some of the stories, however, have elements of the supernatural or are loaded with underworld figures that suggest film noir. There is often a strong idealism in the books as well, carrying a moral message along with the idea that that romantic dreams and aspirations can come true. Stylistically, the foto-novela is often noted for distinctive use of angles, lighting, composition and space.

Chicano/Latino comic book artists in the United States have been heavily influenced by the form, adapting and transforming the style and melodrama to explore different subcultures, darker realities and questions of identity. Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’ work Love and Rockets not only helped popularize the foto-novela form but played an important role in sparking the American alternative comic and graphic novel movement.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/foto ... /what.html

Skip, that last one is so sad, and so true.

As for the one on statutory rape, well.....I suppose I'd rather see that, than see the one about how to come here illegally, or how to rape the American taxpayers.

But altogether, if our borders were secured, and our laws enforced, then none of this would EVEN be an issue. So I take the latter stance. Enforce our laws, and we would not have to spend taxpayers dollars to "teach" these criminals not to rape little girls in OUR country, like they do in theirs!!