There are “girls who report that nuns have conceived them and abortions have been committed,” said Zulay Rodríguez, chair of the National Assembly’s Committee on Women, Children, Youth and the Family, which has been investigating a case of systematic abuse for decades. of people. minors in state-run shelters.
Rodriguez, of the Revolutionary Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), also said that the physical and mental abuse was committed by the “detainees” or staff responsible for the children of at least 14 shelters under investigation.
This is the first time this scandal has been discovered in recent weeks, when an authority points, albeit vaguely, to someone responsible for the harassment the children were subjected to and specifies something else about what they were.
In the face of apparent popular outrage last week, Panamanian President Laurentino Cortizo was forced to broadcast a message on television promising to find and punish those responsible for the abuses, without giving details of what government action you took or in what direction.
Several minors have been sexually abused by “detainees” since 2015 in at least 14 shelters in Panama, and the girls reported that they were pregnant by religious who ran the houses, Rodríguez told EFE.
“The abuses were committed even by detainees” and there is even a case of a minor who “was repeatedly abused for five years, from 10 to 15 years,” said the deputy, often in little harmony with the government sector. on the one hand.
There are also “girls who report that nuns left them pregnant and had abortions,” said Rodriguez, often in little harmony with his party’s government sector.
A parliamentary subcommittee has unveiled a report detailing that dozens of minors have been sexually, physically and psychologically abused in shelters across the country, institutions that run private organizations such as various NGOs and foundations, but are under state supervision. public.
According to the parliamentary inquiry, the shelters were found without a regulated operating license, without qualified staff, with “subhuman” living conditions and that many of the victims of abuse are minors with certain disabilities.
The Attorney General’s Office, where Rodriguez and other lawmakers presented the parliamentary report last week, said it has eight open investigations into housing irregularities, some up to two years old, and that there are defendants, although details of these cases are unknown.
Due to this scandal, the National Secretariat for Children, Adolescents and Families (Senniaf) is in the eye of the hurricane, whose functions include supervising institutions of protection or shelters and whose board has social development portfolios (Mides),, Education, work, economy and control.
The case has sparked outrage in Panama, where protests continued Monday in rejecting child abuse, as well as the reaction of President Laurentino Cortizo’s government, labeled as delayed and devoid of human rights activists and also by opposition politicians.
More than 200 protesters protested outside the Ministry of Labor, partially blocking an important road and demanding justice for the child victims and imprisonment for those responsible for the abuse.
“We have been on the streets for three weeks and there is no exact answer from the government. We saw how they tried to hide the information and the people involved (…) in their youth, we feel revolted, sad, angry and helpless, “said for EFE Dional Sañazar, a member of the organization Juventud Revolucionaria (JR).
Last Wednesday, a week after the scandal broke out, Cortizo called for “maximum law enforcement for those responsible for crimes against the rights of girls, boys and adolescents,” arguing that Senniaf and Mides They filed at least one complaint in 2020 and asked both institutions to become plaintiffs in the judicial process.