A couple of weeks ago, my supervisor, Maria, a trained forensic psychologist in Nicaragua, told me a chilling story of a case she had in the past.
Maria saw two young children of a homicide victim who were scarred from an incident they could never erase from their minds: the first-hand murder of their mother by their father. Their father had seen their mother giving a glass of water to a visiting male stranger, and without caring to know the context, proceeded to brutally slaughter their mother by wrapping her in barbed wire. The children were present while the whole event took place in front of their eyes.
Maria told me this story to help me better understand Nicaragua’s domestic violence problem, which is severe. One out of three Nicaraguan women have reported domestic abuse, making Nicaragua have the second highest rate of domestic violence in Latin America (after Guatemala).
Though in 1996, MINSA declared domestic violence a public health problem, it has done little to address the issue, which remains unfunded and often undiscussed. The problem has not gotten any better since then. Unfortunately widespread poverty and lack of hope continue to feed into this endless cycle of domestic abuse.
Yesterday’s Chicas Poderosa’s session was focused on violence within romantic partnerships and within families. To start off the session we discussed different types of domestic violence – physical, emotional, economical, and sexual- and how to recognize alert signals and identify violent and manipulative partners. We then discussed how to prevent and confront violence in their own romantic relationships. When Maria arrived at the end of the session, she helped me by leading them in an activity (pictured below) that demonstrated the unhealthy power dynamic that exists in violent relationships and then subsequently presenting on what they could do to change this culture of intrafamiliar violence that exists within their communities.
This was an especially difficult lesson for me to teach. I try to make all of my sessions interactive, by asking girls questions and having them raise their hands and participate, but the girls were particularly resistant to answering questions I presented to them about domestic violence. When I asked them if they thought domestic violence was a problem here, it took them a while for them to respond. After a couple of brave girls admitted that they have seen cases of domestic violence here, the rest of the class got the courage to speak up and agree that they thought it was a problem in their community, and that it was important to make changes in this area.
I realize that this is a very a sensitive topic, and I am very proud of the girls for participating in the charla. After the last few sessions that I have, girls are coming up to me afterwards to let me know that they think that the themes of my charlas are “bonita” and are grateful that I am bringing attention to issues that are recognized as important but often pushed under the rug. I hope that these sessions will start conversations amongst the girls and their social networks to ignite some change or some re-evaluation of their perception of how they can address the domestic violence problem in their community.
