2023-06-13 23:00:56
In 2022, the Ombudsman’s Office estimated that 21 girls are raped every day in that country. Here, a case that ended up in the UN.
Peru violated the rights of a girl victim of incest at the hands of his fatherby not guaranteeing her access to a therapeutic abortion and prosecute her criminally after suffering a miscarriage, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child said Tuesday.
The committee, to which the victim (now 19 years old) filed the complaint, considered that Peru had violated her rights “to health and life,” and deplored that the girl, an indigenous woman originally from Huanipaca, department of Apurímacwas harassed by the health, police and judicial authorities.
But the resolution of the UN Committee he comes late to a history of poverty, marginality and the abuse from an early age.
Raped since the age of 9
The minor, whose name the UN did not reveal, she was raped by her father from the age of nineuntil she became pregnant at the age of 13, in 2017.
On her first visit to a hospital in Abancay, the girl said “she did not want to have her father’s child or be pregnant”, as reported by the UN.
The right to a therapeutic abortion
“That request was reiterated in many medical visits later while his state of mental health worsened. However, they were not informed your right to request a therapeutic abortion“, explained the United Nations committee.
In Peru, therapeutic abortion is only authorized in case of risk to the life of the mother.
With the help of an NGO, managed to request a voluntary interruption of pregnancy to the hospital and to the prosecutor who was investigating her rape, but received no reply.
On the contrary, the health personnel insisted on organize prenatal examsand even visited her at her home, sometimes accompanied by police officers, when the girl did not show up for those medical appointments.
“I am appalled by the way in which the national authorities have treated a 13-year-old girl who was the victim of rape and incest,” Ann Skelton, chairperson of the Committee, was quoted as saying in the statement.
From victim to offender
“Far from being protectedGiven his extreme vulnerability, he was revictimized and harassed by the health, police and judicial authorities. In fact, he went from victim to offender,” he emphasized.
Stigmatized and harassed in her family and her communitythe minor had to leave the school and her town, and after her spontaneous abortion she was “accused and convicted of self-abortion without further evidence than her repeated declarations that she did not wish to continue with the pregnancy,” the United Nations statement detailed.
Abortion in Peru
Beyond this case, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child asked Peru decriminalize abortion in all cases of child pregnancyl, and ensure that pregnant minors have access to a safe abortion, particularly in cases of danger to the health and life of the mother, as well as in cases of rape or incest.
Abortion is illegal in Peru unless the mother’s life is in danger. For these cases there is a therapeutic abortion.
But that is the only exception, and the attempts to decriminalize abortion in the Andean country they collapsed in Congress at least four times since 2014, colliding head-on with religious arguments, despite the fact that Peru is a secular state.
Complaints in the Women’s Emergency Centers of the Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations of the country, indicated last year that until October 2022, 70% of the victims of rape were minors. According to the Ombudsman’s Office, 21 girls are raped every day in Peru.
Clarín writing with information from agencies
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