![]() ![]() Young girls aged around 12 or 13 wandered around the shelter carrying small children when VICE World News visited in March 2022. The Rosa Maria House is supported by a local parish and donations, said Ávila, while refusing to go into further detail besides saying that “we belong to a pro-life organization that is not very well seen in the New World Order.” He nodded, and told her she could continue on, seemingly proud of showing off the work he was doing. He believed that by facilitating young girls to give birth, he was doing God’s work, even if the mothers were children themselves, some of whom became pregnant after being raped by adult neighbors and family members. Over the past 22 years, young girls living in the shelter have given birth to over 230 babies, Ávila said. He gave a short interview, and tour of the common areas of the house, like the chapel, the kitchen, and the courtyard with one condition-speaking with girls was off limits. After repeated attempts to call the house with no answer, VICE World News showed up at their door and was greeted by Oscar Ávila, an elderly bald man in charge of the shelter. The Rosa Maria House is in a nondescript white brick house on a quiet street in a nice-ish residential suburb of Asunción. Those were the good things that I saw, that nobody needs anything. ![]() People taught some subjects so they can read, write. They helped me a lot in that sense…They give you everything there: they gave you food, they gave you clothes,” said Gabriela. “They gave me the medicines that I had to take, and do the. She didn’t like being bossed around, “that they tell me to do this or do that,” such as chores, praying in the on-site chapel, or certain lessons. They confiscate the girls’ cell phones and do not allow them to communicate with people outside besides arranged visits with family, she said. She was grateful for the meals and relative safety of the Rosa Maria House, but she didn’t like losing her freedom. She said that many of the girl’s didn’t “know how to read, many came from far away, they didn't have the chance to go to school.” “There were girls of 12 or 13 years old who were already pregnant because of being raped that were brought in by the police." “There I came across the reality of many more girls who were in much worse situations than mine,” she said. She never met her own father, and when she became pregnant she feared her mother would be ashamed “because she also got pregnant with us very young and she didn't want us to go through that situation again,” she said.īut when she arrived at the Rosa Maria House, she realized she was far from the most difficult case there. Gabriela, now in her mid-twenties, described her childhood as “very difficult,” and said that she was sexually abused as a child by a different older man in her life-her former stepfather. “I wanted to study medicine, I already had everything figured out, where I had to take the course, how much the books would cost.” My life was a disaster back then,” Gabriela, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, told VICE World News. “I even tried to commit suicide, I wanted to have an abortion. ![]()
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