One day in November 2015, Faucia from Honduras, went down to the river to get water but there she was beaten and a man raped her. Eight years later, the woman sued her country at the UN because she was banned from having an abortion.
In the garden of the Center for Women’s Rights (CDM) in Tegucigalpa, Faucia – the pseudonym she chose to remain anonymous – told her story following reporting her country, Honduras, to the UN Human Rights Commission last month. She is the daughter of a chief of the Nahua indigenous people, who claim lands. She was attacked by two men and one of them raped her.
“It was retaliation,” assured the 34-year-old woman. “I survived the rape. It was very violent. They threatened to kill me. They told me that if I complained they would kill me and my family,” she said, hiding her face. However, a month later, she overcame her fear and filed a lawsuit with the prosecutor’s office. She didn’t know she was pregnant yet. When she found out, her world came crashing down. “It was a psychological, emotional shock. It was something I mightn’t imagine, that I didn’t want, that I didn’t want,” he said.
But the doctors she spoke to told her they would report her if she had an abortion.
In Honduras, abortion is expressly prohibited, even if the pregnancy has resulted from rape, if the fetus is severely deformed or if the woman’s life is in danger. Women can be sentenced to 3 to 10 years in prison.
Honduras is one of six countries in the region (the others are El Salvador, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Suriname) where abortion is prohibited.
At that time Fausia already had two children and a partner. The threats and harassment she and her family received forced her to move ten times. Eventually, following her home was ransacked, she left the rural community where she lived and settled in the city, the sobbing woman said.
As she was forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, the delivery was very difficult. “In the delivery room, I was crying. Then they forced me to breastfeed and hold (the baby), which I didn’t want to do,” she continued, declining to say more regarding the child.
“I thought regarding killing myself many times because of the disgust I felt, the pain, the agony,” he said.
In 2017, the perpetrators of the attack were arrested, but a few months later they were released due to lack of evidence. “They didn’t believe me,” Faucia commented.
With the help of CDM and the Center for Reproductive Rights (CDR), Faucia reopened the case in 2018. It took eight years following the rape for the perpetrators to be found guilty – although they appealed the decision.
According to data from the Ministry of Health in 2022, every day three teenage girls under the age of 14 are forced to terminate a pregnancy that was the result of rape.
“We’re asking for justice and compensation for Faucia, but we’re also asking the (UN Human Rights) Commission to demand that Honduras end this ban” that violates women’s rights, Catalina Martines, the vice president, told AFP the CDRs for Latin America and the Caribbean. It might take another three years before a decision is made. But “the consequences it will have for Latin America will be enormous, because there will be due process, a report on justice,” he added.
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