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.)
Vulnerable to Violence In Guatemala
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
“Pope Francis is the pope of the people,” Rosa de los Ríos told America in Spanish before the funeral Mass. “He is very close to the people.... That’s why he was so loved. People felt he was very close to them.”
Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy met inside St. Peter’s Basilica ahead of the funeral for Pope Francis on the morning of April 26.
Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re’s homily for the funeral of Pope Francis.
The day before he died, Pope Francis made one final circuit through St. Peter’s Square in his popemobile. “That’s my last image of him alive,” Gerry O’Connell remembered. “He drove among the people.”