Teens in Danger is the name of the operation led by the Public Ministry (MP) and the National Civil Police (PNC) on March 20. The Prosecutor’s Office against Human Trafficking, through the Unit against Criminal Structures and Special Cases, carried out 32 proceedings that left 24 preventively detained.
There are 24 people detained, of them nine workers from the General Directorate of the Penitentiary System (DGSP); seven civilians and eight prisoners, linked to the Barrio 18 gang, notified.
Teenagers in Danger It is a case of sexual exploitation within the pretrial detention center of zone 18, in sector 11, where members of Barrio 18 are held.
According to the MP and the PNC, a dozen girls, boys and adolescents were exploited and sexually assaulted by prisoners. According to investigations, one of the victims was even sexually assaulted by 10 gang members in a single day.
Dangerous relationship
In this case investigated by the MP for three years, and which is still in process, it began with a friendship and romance between gang members and adolescents. Three minors, between 12 and 17 years old, excited; They were invited to go have fun, however, the final destination was the preventive zone 18.
One of the victims told his story to the MP and revealed how the structure operates to allow him to enter that prison, even spending the night for up to two or three nights.
She offered the statement in 2022. She was forced, along with other girls, to have sexual relations with members of Barrio 18 in sector 11 after being recruited in a neighborhood in Guatemala City.
“The victims explained to us how they were recruited through Barrio 18. The way they were recruited and the humiliation they subsequently suffered,” explains Alexander Colop, section prosecutor of the MP’s Anti-Human Trafficking Prosecutor’s Office.
The raped girls told the investigators that their admission to the preventive facility for boys in zone 18 was forced and through deception.
“We were forced to have sexual relations with gang members and then they threatened to kill us if we reported it,” the testimonies reveal.
How do they operate?
Preliminary investigations reveal that in the areas where Barrio 18 is present they have contacts with women, mothers of girls or adolescents who have had ties with gang members, who are in charge of recruiting others. Even on social networks.
The MP’s specialized unit in these cases documented the admission of girls and adolescents, between 12 and 16 years old, to prisons, where they were sexually abused and recruited in order to integrate them into the Barrio 18 gang and its different cliques.
The investigation identified the way the criminal structure operates to capture girls and adolescents and force them to join the different cliques.
They captured them on social networks, instant messaging applications, human (family) networks, institutes or study centers, among others, which are the first contact between girls and adolescents with gang members.
They were then transported in collaborators’ vehicles (taxis, motorcycle taxis and city buses), which were paid for by the gang members or with money from the girls and adolescents that they had in their possession or managed to extract from their parents.
In this relationship of trust, the minors admit to making alleged visits to shopping centers or places of entertainment, but already in the vehicle where they are transported, they change their plans and head towards the preventive zone 18.
In the cars, which are usually pirate taxis, the biological daughter of the woman who recruits goes, but a few meters from the route, she gets off and only the girl or teenager who has been invited to accompany them leaves. It is there that the ordeal begins.
The women, linked to the Barrio 18 gangs, use their daughters’ birth certificates to bring the girls or adolescents into the prison to hand them over to the gang members, who sexually abuse them.
All this, given the permissiveness of the prison guards, who, it is assumed, receive a bribe so that this type of sexual violence can occur.
“We believe that the moment a girl or adolescent enters a prison, she must have all the guarantees and, above all, the respective care,” explains the head of the prosecutor’s office against human trafficking.
He adds that they have determined that the SP guards facilitate the entry of minors. “The responsibility that the Penitentiary System has to prevent girls or adolescents from being victims of this type of crime is important,” comments the prosecutor.
One of the investigators states that the gang members deprived of liberty paid Q1,000 to Q1,500 to the recruiters for each girl they transferred to prison.
Prosecutor Colop explains that the investigation continues and also reaches the Mara Salvatrucha (MS13) in other prisons in the country.
“The modality of recruiting minors for criminal groups is broad. Today we are concentrating on the Barrio 18 gang. We believe that there may also be adolescent victims of the Mara Salvatrucha,” explains prosecutor Colop.
Our statement in the face of the reprehensible acts of trafficking, exploitation and sexual violence of which adolescents have been victims in Deprivation of Liberty centers run by the Penitentiary System. pic.twitter.com/SrWuo2FPBy
— Colectivo Artesana (@casaartesana) March 21, 2024
Activate protocol
Andrea Barrios, general coordinator of the Artesana Collective, assures that they consider this operation important because for years they have reported multiple cases. She values captures because only in this way can these criminal networks within the prison be dismantled.
“For years we have reported these types of despicable acts in the pretrial detention center in zone 18 and in the Cantel penal farm in Quetzaltenango,” he says.
According to Barrios, they have had complaints of girls who remain in a prison for up to three days.
“A case like this occurred in Quetzaltenango, in the penal farm, where, when she was already leaving, they took away the money they had paid her after being sexually abused,” says the Artesana coordinator.
That is why Barrios recognizes the value of the victims and their families who have denounced “these reprehensible acts that have caused irreparable damage to their lives and that the State will have to compensate and offer life plans with opportunities for comprehensive development.”
The activist suggests that the head of the DGSP immediately apply the “specialized care protocol for girls, boys and adolescents with family members deprived of liberty in the different preventive detention and sentence enforcement centers run by the SP.”
Barrios recalls that today a special protection ruling issued by Judge IV of Children and Adolescents of the metropolitan area is in force, who orders measures to be taken to prevent these reprehensible acts.
9 agents of the #penitentiary system They have been captured today by @PNCdeGuatemala
Accused of several crimes, these agents disgraced their families, their colleagues and the entire country. Now they will answer for their actions.
There’s no tomorrow, #LaSeguridadEsHoy! pic.twitter.com/U92dTcGM5R
— Francisco Jiménez (@FJimenezmingob) March 20, 2024
Since 2023, the Artesana collective has carried out actions before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to request precautionary measures in favor of girls, boys and adolescents.
One of the immediate measures to prevent this practice from continuing is to implement the identification of girls, boys and adolescents who have relatives deprived of their liberty.
A birth certificate is not adequate, a database must be generated, cards must be issued and families must be enrolled by fingerprint. “All this has already been ordered by judges, but nothing has been fulfilled,” laments Barrios.
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