Human rights committee blames Guatemala for forcing girl who was raped to carry out her pregnancy

GUATEMALA CITY (AP) — A panel of independent experts who make up the United Nations Human Rights Committee said Thursday they found that Guatemala violated the rights of a 14-year-old girl who was raped and forced to continue her pregnancy.

A former director of a government-run daycare facility she had attended as a child raped her on multiple occasions beginning in 2009 when she was 13 and no longer attended the center, but she was denied access to abortion, forced to carry out the birth and care for the child, treatment the committee compared to torture.

“No girl should be forced to carry the child of her rapist. Doing so robs her of her dignity, her future, and her most basic rights,” Committee member Hélène Tigroudja said in a statement, adding that “This is not just a violation of reproductive autonomy — it is a profound act of cruelty.”

The committee monitors countries’ adherence to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

When the girl’s mother found out about the abuse she reported it to authorities. The man and his wife tried to bribe and threaten the girl’s family into withdrawing the report. The case wound on in Guatemala’s justice system for nine years, but the man was never punished.

“Guatemala did not properly investigate the rape, nor did it take effective action to prosecute the perpetrator,” the committee said.

“Guatemala is one of the Latin American countries with the highest rates of both forced motherhood and systematic impunity for sexual violence,” the committee’s statement said. “Although the Guatemalan Criminal Code allows abortion in specific situations to avoid a threat to the life of the mother, access to legal abortion is almost impossible in practice.”

The committee called on Guatemala to establish a system to record and monitor such cases. In the case of the girl, it said the state should support her to complete higher education and attain her goals.

Catalina Martínez, vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean for the Center of Reproductive Rights, one of the groups that brought the girl’s case forward, said there is agreement in society that the protection of girls is a priority.

“But that promise is broken when we don’t provide access to all health services, including abortion, and we obligate them to assume motherhood that they don’t want and for which they are not prepared,” she said.