TEGUCIGALPA -- Rape destroys childhood. It corrupts the body, mutilates the heart, suffocates the soul. Nothing will ever be the same. Once guileless and inexhaustible, youthful joy is reduced to half-hearted reflex. Sadness hovers like a phantom, unrelenting and timeless. And when memories take over, the agony resurfaces.
"It's like being stirred from a dream, night after night, in the dark. It's like being forced to relive the horror," says the girl with the pigtails, bright T-shirt and patched overalls. She is 15 and knows more of life than she cares to. Two years younger but infinitely older than her age, another girl weeps silently at her companion's evocations. She is pregnant. Her baby will be delivered free of charge in a public clinic. The girls huddle as we speak, their hands clasped, their eyes trained on some hidden void beneath their feet.
"The scars don't show," says the girl with the pigtails. She makes a fist and places it against her heart. "But they are just as ugly, just as painful."
Here, at Casa Alianza's Querubines residential sanctuary, on a quiet street far from the maddening tempo and clamor of the capital's center, they speak freely, delivered at last, if not fully vindicated, from an all-too-common circumstance. Both girls were raped when they were seven, one by her stepfather, the other by an "uncle." They admit with unsettling candor to having contemplated suicide. An unwholesome lust for life eventually drove them to the streets where their initiation into prostitution began.
Official estimates put the number of minors being sexually exploited in Honduras at about 1,000. Confidential sources at the Ministry of Security and Interpol concede this figure is overly conservative. Most of the victims are homeless children. Most have flocked to the capital and San Pedro Sula. Many now roam the streets of Choluteca, El Progresso, La Ceiba, Puerto Cortes, Roatan, Tela and Trujillo.
"For homeless children, all paths lead to the sex trade," says Bruce Harris, executive director of Casa Alianza, a child advocacy organization active in Central America and Mexico. "But it's not really prostitution. Poverty, hunger, despair readily expose minors to abuse and exploitation. A clean bed, a shower, a decent meal, the prospect of a hug, the illusion of a moment of love are all powerful incentives. Any mark of affection seems infinitely better than none. The kids learn to rationalize every encounter. And every encounter traumatizes them anew."
In the streets, the first rule of survival is to reject one's humanity. It's not a choice. It's a precondition for some, a trap for others. There is no glamour in such lifestyle. There is only fear and humiliation. All too often there is violence and death.
Fallen angels redeemed
There are 11 girls at the Querubines shelter. The youngest is 12, the oldest 16. All were rescued from the back rooms of legitimate businesses --- nightclubs, small eateries and hotels in raids conducted by special agents of the National Police in response to complaints issued by Casa Alianza.
According to Alfonso Lecayo, Casa Alianza's Coordinator of Therapeutic Communities, the girls exhibited "severe symptoms of drug-induced psychosis --- from extreme agitation to near-catatonic depression. To endure their lot, most had become habituated to drugs. Most admit to have been sexually abused at home. Some were abandoned --- or delivered --- to their fate by families overwhelmed by poverty."
A sea of youthful faces lays bare two incompatible expressions --- that of a little girl, spirited, full of mischief, the other the jaded visage of a woman hardened before her time. I pose them for a photo and exhort them to smile.
"We don't feel like smiling just yet," says one girl on behalf of her peers. It's a good-natured bravado but in their gaze percolate defiance and self-possession. They shall not be forced to do anything ever again, not even smile, if they don't feel like it. Through the viewfinder I detect sadness, tangible and forbidding, clouding their little girl eyes. I make them laugh at last and they relent.
"It will take time to cast out the demons," warns Bruce Harris.
"Psychiatry has long recognized the link between childhood trauma and adult antisocial behavior. Domestic violence, physical abuse and sexual molestation can trigger long-lasting emotional and mental illnesses. Victims of sexual exploitation are the survivors of a crime they cannot comprehend but which ultimately has enormous impact on their lives and the rest of society. The cycle of violence and trauma is generally self-sustaining. Yesterday's victims often become tomorrow's lawbreakers. This is why street children so desperately need to be rescued, protected, rehabilitated, redeemed. One by one. Each and every one. The very well-being of the human family is at stake."
Despite their ordeal --- or perhaps because of it --- the girls at the Querubines group home seem imbued with a fresh sense of belonging and an urge to take possession of their own destinies. Positive reinforcements --- school, homework, chores --- and discipline softened by love and caring, help structure their lives.
I tell the girls that the past cannot be bought back, that only the future counts. And I bid them farewell, knowing that it is much easier said than done.
Next issue: a regional overview of child prostitution and its role in international tourism
W. E. Gutman is a veteran journalist on regular assignment in Central America since 1991. He lives in southern California.
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