RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro apologised on Tuesday after his visit to a group of teenagers he implied were sex workers drew accusations of “paedophilia” from opponents.
Fighting for re-election in an October 30 runoff against veteran leftist Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the far-right president has been swept up in a firestorm over his remarks about the underage Venezuelan girls, whom he called “very pretty”.
“If my words, which were taken out of context in bad faith, were somehow misinterpreted or caused discomfort to our Venezuelan sisters, I apologise,” Bolsonaro said in a video posted online.
“My commitment has always been to better welcome and assist all people fleeing dictatorships anywhere in the world,” he added, flanked by his wife and Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido’s representative in Brazil.
Bolsonaro recognises Guaido as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, rather than socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
The controversy erupted las Friday when Bolsonaro spoke in a YouTube interview about visiting the home of “three or four very pretty 14- or 15-year-olds” last year in a poor Brasilia neighbourhood.
“There was a vibe between us. I turned around. ‘Can I come into your house?’ I went inside. There were 15 or 20 girls in the house, all Venezuelans aged 14 and 15, getting ready on a Saturday. Why? To earn a living,” he said.
The anecdote appeared intended as one of Bolsonaro’s frequent warnings that Brazil will suffer the same fate as crisis-torn Venezuela if it elects Lula. But Bolsonaro found himself on the defensive after Lula’s allies attacked the comments as “depraved” and the hashtag #Bolsonaropedofilo (Bolsonaro paedophile) went viral online.
His campaign succeeded on Sunday in a petition to electoral authorities to ban an attack advertisement based on excerpts from the interview.
But Bolsonaro said the preceding day had been “the most terrible of my life”.
In an interview on Tuesday, Lula said Bolsonaro’s behaviour “is that of a paedophile”.
“He realised it, that’s why he got scared and tried to explain himself as quickly as possible,” Lula said.
After Bolsonaro’s apology, at least two other videos in which the president had told the same anecdote about the girls were shared online. In May, Bolsonaro also relayed the anecdote during an event broadcast on public television.
“Is that what we want for our daughters and granddaughters?” he said.
Bolsonaro, who vehemently rejects the opposition’s criticisms, said in Tuesday’s video that his former women’s minister, Damares Alves, had “almost immediately” investigated the girls’ case and found they were not in fact prostitutes.
He said Alves and First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro had visited the girls on Tuesday and “found they were rebuilding their lives and even helping other Venezuelan refugees find jobs and integrate” in Brazil, which hosts an estimated 260,000 Venezuelan refugees, migrants and asylum seekers.
