Four girls are raped every hour in Brazil, according to study

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In the video above: Brazil repudiates the alleged collective rape of a teenager (2016)

(CNN) - In Brazil, four girls under 13 are raped every hour and every two minutes the police receive a report of violence against women.

Those are just two of the findings of a new study published Tuesday by the non-governmental organization Brazilian Public Security Forum, which found that violence against women and girls is getting worse in the country.

Brazil, where more than 200 million people live, is already among the most dangerous places in the world to be a woman.

The report found that feminicides, when a woman is killed for being a woman, increased 4% last year last year, even when the national homicide rate fell 10.8%. In 88% of those cases, the perpetrator was the woman's partner or ex-partner.

According to the study, which was based on government data, more than 263,000 women suffered serious injuries at the hands of their partners.

The country also saw the highest number of reported violations, and almost 54% of the victims were girls under 13.

Images of models that portray women who have been abused in a demonstration against violence against women on Copacabana Beach in 2016.

A dangerous place for women

Violence against women is a problem that Brazil has faced for some time.

"Brazil remains one of the most dangerous places in the world for women," prosecutor Valeria Scarance told the National Journal of Brazil's Globo newspaper on Tuesday. "And the most dangerous place for a woman is her own house."

A 2015 study found that Brazil had the fifth highest rate of homicides of women in the world.

According to the non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch (HRW), domestic violence remains widespread. But not enough is being done to combat it, according to HRW. Every year, thousands of cases are not properly investigated, and in 2017, 23 shelters for victims of domestic violence were closed in Brazil due to budget cuts.

Federal judge Ben-Hur Viza said domestic violence persists because it is still culturally acceptable. "It's something that happens from walls inside, inside the house," he said in a documentary about feminicide released last year.

Some fear that the situation will only get worse under extreme right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro, who has been in office since the beginning of this year and has made openly misogynistic comments.

Bolsonaro once told a congresswoman that she did not deserve to be raped because she was "very ugly," TV Globo from Brazil reported.

Violation