Young women confront challenge of sexual abuse

You don’t need to watch the news every night to know that it’s not easy being a young woman in Belize these days. High on their list of challenges is sexual abuse… and today, as News Five’s Jacqueline Woods reports, talking is the first step in fighting this growing menace.

Shanice Seguro, 12 years old
?Like we, people just take advantage ah we because we so young. They take us dah bush and sometime they just hib (throw) we dah bush.?

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
Twelve-year-old Shanice Seguro speaking out on a problem affecting many of her peers: the sexual abuse and exploitation of young women.

Heather Baizar, 13 years old
?You shouldn?t just keep quiet about it like what the t-shirt says, you have to you know speak out, step up for yourself. You can?t just stay there and let them do that to you. You have to be brave.?

One organization that has been an inspiration to many young women is Youth Enhancement Services. Today, YES reached out to its membership and invited the girls to speak out on behalf of all the children and young adults who are suffering in silence.

Cindy Martin, President, YES Leadership Girls
?There are lots of women who are being sexually abused and exploited and they do not know that they are being sexually abused and exploited, or they do know, but they are just afraid to come out and talk about it. So we are giving them reason why they should come out and talk about it and they should not feel scared or afraid of what is happening to them.?

YES Leadership Girls President Cindy Martin says recently they forwarded a list of nine recommendations to the government and authorities, who they believe are in the position to effectively address the problem. But Martin says so far they have not received any kind of response. Martin listed two of the main changes they believe need to be made.

Cindy Martin
?The forms that we have presently for rape victims and sexual abuse victims, well we believe are not fully loaded to give whatever happened to these victims, so we want to make a new form to have the dates, the times and everything and the names of the victims should be on these forms and so on.?

?Then they also want to add social workers in every district because presently there is only one social worker in each district. So they want to make it two because the work that these social workers has is too much for them, so they want to make another social worker in each district to help them with the cases that they are given.?

It?s the fourth time that YES has held a gathering to talk about issues affecting young women. The exercise was well received by the participants who believed the one-day forum will help raise awareness.

Yvonne Jenkins, 23 years old
?The purpose of this is to help the younger ladies because age noh really matter because the men now a days just decided their minds that?s the way they want to be.?

Meisha McKay, 15 years old
?It is not something that we are to be ashamed of, but something that we should bring out in the open. Because as our theme says, sexual abuse is not a hush, hush you know and we as young women should be more outspoken about it you know that it does not continue to happen in our society.?

Besides all the talk, the participants also watched music videos they believe are examples of women being exploited. It is believed that many girls have been negatively influenced by what they have seen on television. Jacqueline Woods for News Five.

Following the forum, the young women are expected to go out into their respective communities and share the information they have received.