Advertisement

Fire in troubled Guatemalan 'safe home' kills at least 34 teenage girls

 
A relative of a youth who resided at the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home wails as she waits for the release of the names of those who died in a fire at the shelter, outside the morgue where the bodies are being identified in Guatemala City, Thursday, March 9, 2017. The death toll in the fire at a the youth shelter on the outskirts of Guatemala rose to 31 Thursday as a dozen more girls died at hospitals overnight and details began to emerge of a tragedy fueled by angry, neglected youths seeking to flee terrible conditions. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
A relative of a youth who resided at the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home wails as she waits for the release of the names of those who died in a fire at the shelter, outside the morgue where the bodies are being identified in Guatemala City, Thursday, March 9, 2017. The death toll in the fire at a the youth shelter on the outskirts of Guatemala rose to 31 Thursday as a dozen more girls died at hospitals overnight and details began to emerge of a tragedy fueled by angry, neglected youths seeking to flee terrible conditions. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)
Published March 9, 2017

The hundreds of Guatemalan teenagers in the "safe home" were among society's most vulnerable. They hailed from broken families and troubled pasts. They battled mental illness, abandonment and abuse.

The boys and girls had faced immensely different realities yet they all held one thing in common: they were sent to the Virgen de la Asunción Safe Home because they had nowhere else to go. But there, it turns out, the abuse only escalated. The residents of the youth home, a sprawling complex in the town of San Jose Pinula, Guatemala, were reportedly sexually violated, crammed into overcrowded spaces and given scarce or poor quality food, authorities said.

On Tuesday night, after years of complaints that went unresolved, dozens of the residents stormed the gates of the shelter, carrying out a mass escape. Riot police quelled the uproar, returning many of the residents to the facility, where supervisors locked them in their dormitories as punishment.

It was inside one of these dorms that a teenage girl made a final, desperate act to be heard.

About 9 a.m. Wednesday, as other residents ate their breakfast, she set her mattress on fire, according to early reports from authorities. Outside, the residents and staff heard the screams. One resident said she heard a girl cry out that she was going to sacrifice herself "so that everyone would know what they were living inside."

The blaze quickly spread through the dormitory, enveloping dozens of girls in smoke and flames.

"By the time the room was unlocked, it was too late," Leonel Dubón, director of a child advocacy group in Guatemala, told the Washington Post.

Nineteen of the girls, ages 13 to 17, died at the site, their bodies so burned that families and officials struggled to identify them. Fifteen more succumbed one by one to their grisly injuries at hospitals in Guatemala City. Several more girls were fighting for their lives, some with severe burns over more than half their bodies. On Thursday, the death toll was 34.

More than a day later, distraught parents haunted hospitals and the morgue, passing scraps of paper scrawled with the names of loved ones they hoped to find.

Geovany Castillo told the Associated Press his 15-year-old daughter Kimberly suffered burns on her face, arms and hands but survived. She was in a locked-in area where girls who took part in the escape attempt had been placed, he said.

"My daughter said the area was locked and that several girls broke down a door, and she survived because she put a wet sheet over herself," Castillo told the AP.

"She said the girls themselves set the fire," he said, adding: "She said the girls told her that they had been raped and in protest they escaped, and that later, to protest, to get attention, they set fire to the mattresses."

Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines

Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines

Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter

We’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every morning.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

A wave of anguish swept over the small, impoverished Central American country. The deaths prompted the president, Jimmy Morales, to call for three days of national mourning and the cancellation of all public activities, "given the magnitude of this national tragedy." The director of the shelter was dismissed, the government announced, promising a thorough investigation of the fire.

The deaths were agonizing not just because the victims were so young and vulnerable, but because the government could have — and should have — prevented them, relatives and human rights advocates said. One local newspaper referred to the tragedy with the words: "The cries that many heard but no one heeded."

On numerous occasions, as early as 2013, Guatemala's human rights commission had recommended that the shelter close, because of its overcrowded, inadequate conditions, Abner David Paredes Cruz, a youth advocate at Guatemala's human rights office, said in an interview with the Post.

Only a few months ago, a judge ordered that the facility begin to transfer its residents back to their families and to other shelters in order to eventually close. Still, the shelter remained open. Though it had begun slowly moving out residents, not enough was done, "there were no protocols for enforcement," Paredes said.

"On International Women's Day, these young women died due to the state's lack of action," Paredes said. "It's a situation as grave as this one that draws the attention to what needs to change, to what Guatemalan children are living."

Guatemala has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world, at 47 percent, and is afflicted with poverty, low levels of education, corruption and violent crime. The troubled lives of those taken to the Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home (as the name translates into English) reflected the poor living conditions facing some of the nation's youth.

In government records and local media reports, residents and their families described an institution plagued with overcrowding and abuse.

The facility housed about 800 residents in a space meant for 500, and served as a shelter for many who had already served out criminal sentences and had no families or homes to return to.

That meant former convicted felons were sometimes placed in the same living spaces as children recovering from sexual abuse or suffering from mental illness.

"Children from the street, children who had been in gangs, children with disabilities, it was a mix of many populations with many difficulties," Dubón, director of the child advocacy group El Refugio de la Niñez, said.

The complex, surrounded by trees and a 30-foot-wall, consisted of multiple buildings and dormitories. Residents sometimes lacked proper hygiene, clothing, shoes and beds — many had to sleep on decrepit mats on the ground, according to the November 2016 human rights commission report. At one point, residents alleged there was a lockup known as the "chicken coop" where adolescents were physically punished, according to local press.

A year or two ago, six girls were reportedly locked in a small room, measuring about six square feet, as punishment. Some of the girls were not given their required psychiatric medications. During that time, one of the girls smothered another with a scarf, killing her.

"We are all responsible for this situation, for not reacting in time," Dubón said. "It's necessary for the system to transform because if not, children will keep dying."

Dubón said he spent most of Wednesday at the home, helping transfer some of the residents — mostly victims of sexual assault — to other shelters and homes. Distressed family members rushed to the shelter, two local hospitals and a morgue, to find out whether their children were among the dead.

"There was so much pain, so much frustration," Dubón said. "It wasn't clear who died, who was alive, who had escaped. . .no one was prepared for something like this."

A mother of two of the girls in the home, Madeline Hernandez, told local newspaper El Periodico that her 14-year-old daughter had told her in recent days that she wanted to leave the home, citing examples of physical abuse and poor food. One of her daughters was among those who died Wednesday; Hernandez was one of the only parents to identify her daughter from those burned at the site.

Another woman shouted out: "They are not criminals or animals, they are children, they are people, they are adolescents," local news outlet Prensa Libre reported.

A woman who lived near the shelter told El Periodico that three of the girls had asked her for help committing suicide. "Give me pills, a knife or something. We don't want to live here," they told her.

"I was shocked because even though I pass by here every day," the woman said, "I never imagined the horror that these girls could be living."