Trauma in Latin America

I am teaching a class on child abuse and family violence here in Peru. From reading the World Health Organization's report on various country's responses to child abuse, I noticed that Peru isn't doing very well. And as I have been teaching these students every day, I have been hearing more and more stories about what they have endured.
Sexual abuse is the most frequently reported type of abuse here in Peru. More than half of all girls experience it in some form or another. After giving two lectures on it and fielding questions about how I respond to abusers in therapy, I suddenly learned that the term abuso sexual, most often refers to intercourse. I was stunned to realize how many girls are inappropriately sexualized here, and that, at such early ages!
In the first class, a middle-aged woman in the front row asked me, "What do you do if you have been sexually abused? Can you still do therapy with people? What do I need to do first?" Good questions. So glad you asked.

Another asked, "I am a pastor and a psychologist. People come to me with all of their problems. What do I do if a man comes to me with his family and I think he is abusing his daughter? Must I report him?"
Of course.
"But that means that he automatically goes to jail for 14 years. There is no therapy offered in the prisons. So when he comes out, his life is ruined. He has lost his family and his life."
He should have thought of that before he abused his daughter.
"But the whole church will be angry with me because I'm supposed to help someone like this."

"My sister got drunk at a party and several boys raped her at one time. She has never talked about it. Now I understand what her experience is after listening to these lectures and I want to help her."
It will be wonderful for her to hear that you support and understand her.
"Yes. She has had five live-in boyfriends and she shows no sign of staying with the one she is with now."
This is quite common, actually.
"I want to do therapy for her. Where do we begin?"
That isn't a good idea. We all want to help our families, but we must relate to them as people, not therapists.
"If she tells me what happened, all I do is cry. I don't think that helps her."
I think it might be a good starting point.

And there are other abuses and traumas that have never been uttered:
"When my children were 8 and 10 years old, my husband was traveling with them in Columbia. The guerillas captured them and kidnapped my husband, leaving the children in the car surrounded by the soldiers for one day. They returned my husband to the children and they continued on their journey. I have never hear them talk about this experience even though they are 16 and 20 years old now. Do you think they have post-traumatic symptoms?"

"I have had a 12-year-old boy come to my [pastoral] office and he told me that his uncle has been molesting him. Do I have to report this? I promised him that I would keep it a secret."
You can't make promises to children that legally, you cannot keep. That will most likely not help him in the long term.

"Do you think that before a woman gets married that she should always tell her husband that she has been abused?"
Would you really want to be married to someone that you would have to keep secrets from?

There is much pain in this world. It is not limited to one region. The clinical abuse stories that I have shared with them has shocked them--"How can people do this to one another?"
"Does this happen often in the United States?"
Our forms of abuse have become much more sophisticated and shocking than their run-of-the-mill pervasive varieties.

We all battle with the fallout of these kinds of acts. The devil is alive and well, and still on the ground.
I hope that our discussions down here about family life will result in good things for clients, families, and students. That will have been worth all the inconveniences and challenges of being in this place.