Commentary by Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Thanks to the unforgiving photography of Swedish photographer Linda Forsell, the world is catching a glimpse of the horrifying abuse of Guatemalan girls, some of whom are having babies at the age of just 10 years after being abused by mostly family members.
The Daily Mail is reporting on Forsell’s shocking expose in which she documents the abuse crisis in this nation where 90 percent of teen births involve a relative such as an uncle or cousin. Thirty percent involve the girls’ own father.
“In 2014, there were 5,100 babies born to teen mothers under the age of 14, up from 4,354 the year before,” the Mail reports. “The government is attempting to crack down on the epidemic, however: this week a new law was passed, increasing the legal age for marriage to 18. Previously, it had been just 14.”
In 2012, there were 2,000 known cases of teen girls under the age of 14 giving birth to a child, and yet only eight men were convicted of crimes.
In 2011, 35 new mothers were just 10 years old.
Forsell worked on the story for two years, making repeated trips to the country where she documented the stories told to her by victims of these crimes. For instance, one girl reported being tied to a tree while a 53 year-old man raped her. Another girl, age 12, was sold to her 22 year-old husband.
Mirna Montenegro, the head of Guatemala’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Observatory (OSAR), suggested that the problem stems from men’s belief that a woman is their “property and possession.”
“We’ve heard fathers say ‘She’s my daughter and my property so I will do what I want with her’,” Montenegro said.
Rape was used as a weapon during the Guatemalan civil war which lasted 36 years and didn’t end until the mid-90’s. During that time, an estimated 100,000 women were sexually assaulted.
However, the crime didn’t stop when the war ended and thousands continue to be raped every year. Only about 10,000 are brave enough to report it and just one in 10 will ever see their attacker convicted.
Sadly, the problem is not just being perpetrated by men. Forsell says she met mothers who sold their daughters and women who didn’t report the crime because they thought it was just normal behavior.
“A lot of the time these people are not evil – they just believe it is okay,” Forsell told the Mail.
The government crackdown is having an impact, and sometimes it’s not in a good way. For instance, a charity worker reported to the Guardian earlier this year that families are now forcing their under-age girls to give birth at home because if she delivers in a hospital the man will be reported.
As appalling as this tale is, the same article went so far as to blame the Catholic Church for the problem, saying that restrictions on birth control, rather than uncontrolled sexual violence, was the cause of this problem. In other words, these crimes should be enabled by putting girls on birth control which will allow men to continue to abuse them but with no fear of being found out through a pregnancy.
This kind of twisted thinking does nothing more than perpetuate the problem, leaving men “protected” while innocent little girls continue to be victimized.
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