Viva staff member Beth G. gives us a glimpse of her experience visiting the San Salvador network last week.
We all have to make decisions about the future. What university should I go to? Where should I live? Should I get married? What job should I be in? Should I use my body to make a living?
Hold on, let’s rewind. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never asked myself that last question. But that’s what’s on the mind of Juana, a 14-year-old girl from El Salvador, who I met this afternoon.
She is one of about 80 children who come to Fundacion Amor (the Foundation of Love, one of the projects in Viva’s San Salvador network) every day for lunch, games and help with their homework. Juana’s mother brought her and her younger sister Claudia to the project about five years ago, as she couldn’t be around to take care of her daughters when they weren’t at school – her job in one of the ‘bars’ in central San Salvador took all of her time.
Fundacion Amor’s director, Elisa, told me that both girls were very quiet and shy when they first arrived. “It was only when they had been with us for almost one year that Claudia finally opened up to one of the staff about what had been going on in the home – their father had been sexually abusing both girls since they were about seven years old.”
No matter how long I work for Viva, and how many similar stories I hear in country after country, I will never be able to understand how a parent can do that to their own child. Even Elisa, who faces situations like this every day, was full of emotion as she continued the girls’ story. “When we learned what was going on, of course we acted quickly. We reported their father to the police and, praise God, they arrested him straight away. He is in jail now for his actions! Also Viva has been providing a counsellor for us, to help talk and listen with the girls, and this has made so much progress for them. Over the last two years we have seen them growing so confident and happy, they are completely changed.”
Elisa also told me that because of what Juana and Claudia have been through, they can sense in other children when they have experienced something similar. They have been getting alongside these kids and befriending them, and letting a member of staff know that they think something is going on. Several other cases of abuse have now been discovered and are being dealt with.
Yet despite the amazing progress that’s been made, Juana is now facing a new challenge: “She has done so well in recovering from this trauma, and she has even said that she can forgive her father, which is a miracle,” Elisa told me. “But now, as she becomes a teenager, we are beginning to see her act more and more like her mother and the other adults she sees in her home environment.”
Other staff at the project report that Juana is becoming increasingly flirtatious in her words and her actions, not only with boys her own age but with older men too. Elisa’s smile was sad as she continued: “We have tried to love and care for her in a way that shows what good healthy relationships should be like. But what has been modelled for her in all her life? What does she see in the community around her, and in her own family? Brokenness, everywhere. From a young age the ‘love’ she has been shown by her father has been all about her body, and looking at her mother’s job she sees sex as just another way to make a living. It is all she knows.”
It’s always such a mixture of emotions when I travel with my job – I hear some of the saddest and most horrific stories of what children have gone through, but I also get to meet people who are helping to make those children whole again. The staff at Funacion Amor are hopeful that as Juana continues the counselling sessions, and keeps coming to the project every day, that they can show her a different future, and help her choose a better life. Whatever she decides, what I saw today showed me that there is one thing she has no choice about: through Viva and the team at Fundacion Amor, Juana will be offered consistent love and support no matter what.
- Beth G, from El Salvador
HELP THE LATIN AMERICA NETWORKS AS THEY CONTINUE TO CARE FOR CHILDREN LIKE JUANA
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Beth G article, about Junaa in el Salvador, is just so shocking,but not made to sound over dramatized although what happened to this girls here is so incledibly unbelivable).But also ,shows what a compassionate and great work, VIVA, is doing for children like this And I think, for those like me, who are not directly working with VIVA, praying, is the next BIG thing we can do!! Because I belive in the work of VIVA, and equally I know that GOD will hear our prayers. Pray so Our Almighty Lord will touch the hearts of those people, who have been weak enough to harm this inocents lives!. Pray so God ,gives VIVA, the resourses and support from the local authorities, to make a change, in the name of LOVE!! ( Because as we all know, our GOD is all about LOVE)