Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options

In Guatemala young women are vulnerable to many forms of violence, according to the human rights office of the Archdiocese of Guatemala City. Girls are most often the victims of childhood abuse, and adolescent girls are victims of sexual abuse that is often unreported. The office said that young women in Guatemala’s “chauvinist” society are objects of discrimination and in some cases forced to marry and deprived of an education. Girls as young as 10 have become pregnant. Often their abusers are other family members, so the assaults go unreported to authorities. All these abuses of girls contribute to Guatemala’s persisting poverty, the office reports. While laws are on the books in Guatemala to protect girls, they are not fully implemented, and the state does not employ sufficient resources for this purpose, according to the archdiocese. (See Editorial, p. 5.)

Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.

The latest from america

A joint Catholic-Evangelical report found that an overwhelming majority of people impacted by the Trump administration's mass deportations are Christian.
Pope Francis is “in good humor” and “receives much affection” from people worldwide, the Vatican spokesman said on April 1.
Gerard O’ConnellApril 01, 2025
Denzel Washington as Othello and Jake Gyllenhaal as Iago in ‘Othello’ on Broadway
In Broadway revivals of ‘Othello’ and ‘Glengarry Glen Ross,’ the spectacle of self-defeating male competition and betrayal is the main draw.
Rob Weinert-KendtApril 01, 2025
On this episode of “Preach” for the Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year C, Amirah Orozco joins host Ricardo da Silva, S.J., to offer a woman’s perspective on the adulterous woman that draws insight from liberation theologies.
PreachMarch 31, 2025