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II. Selected Rape Victim Testimonies

“Blanca Valdés” was forty-one when she was raped by a cab-driver in Mexico City in 2005.  She did not report the rape to the authorities, even after she discovered that she was pregnant, because she previously had been insulted and ignored by public authorities when she reported that her husband had beaten her.  She told Human Rights Watch how deeply this imposed pregnancy affected her.  Valdés ultimately obtained an abortion through unofficial channels.

You know, there are jokes: “If you are raped, lie still and cooperate.”  But it is not possible.  It is not physical, what really hurts is the anger. … At first [after the rape], I locked myself up in my house.  I cleaned it over and over again.  And when I felt bad, I would wash myself as many times as was necessary.  And the last thing on my mind was that I could be pregnant. … [I did a pregnancy test] and that’s when the whole situation hit me. … I thought: “Who is going to help me now?” … I thought: “Every time I see that baby, I am going to think about what happened.” … My other two children were desired. … It would be so different if you had to have the result of something so ugly, so dirty.  And then you have to take care of it, because it is your baby. … I thought that if I keep this child, I will not be able to save the other [two], and not even myself. … It was a part of me, but a part that I did not want, a part that I had not asked for. …  I have had bad experience with the justice system.  One time my husband hit me. … I told the officer that [my husband] had hit me with a hammer in the stomach.  And the officer said that he had not hit me hard [and did nothing]. … [After the rape] my father said: “Let’s go to the police, my girl.”  And I said: “What for?  So that everyone will know [that I was raped]?  So that they can mistreat me again?  So that they can make fun of me because I am alone?” ... I felt afraid.  Afraid to die, afraid to bleed to death.¹

“Marcela Gómez” is the mother of a mentally disabled girl who was seventeen years old when she was raped and got pregnant.  Gómez reported her daughter’s rape to the public prosecutor’s office in her state, and insisted that the pregnancy be interrupted.  But instead of assisting Gómez and her daughter, public prosecutors and doctors repeatedly bounced her from one institution to another without giving her a final answer.  Gómez filed a petition with a judge, who refused to authorize the abortion despite its legality under prevailing state law, noting that he was under no obligation to do so because an abortion would result in the death of the fetus.   The judge, however, also did not prohibit the abortion.  The intervention was finally granted by state authorities under the dual conditions that it did not appear in hospital and other records as a legal abortion after rape, and that Gómez and her daughter did not divulge information about the case to the public.  Gómez told Human Rights Watch of her ordeal:

The DIF [Integrated Family Services agency, social services] sent us to the public prosecutor’s office, to the sexual crimes unit. … So we did that, and then the [criminal] investigation was opened, and something like a month went by. … They still didn’t arrest the guy. … Something like two months went by, and I saw that [my daughter] didn’t get her period. … The man from the public prosecutor’s office said that it was alright [to have an abortion] because it was rape. … [There were also medical reasons] the pregnancy could not go ahead. … But when I went to ask in the Ministry of the Interior [of the state], in the public hospitals, they all denied [her] access. …  The public prosecutor said to me that we had every right in the world [to have an abortion], but that unfortunately no one would want to carry it out. … Then they minimized it, as if what happened to her was nothing. … [Finally, Gómez’ daughter was allowed to have an abortion provided by the state, but covertly].  It was “under the table.” … They did it like she had had a miscarriage because of her medicine. … In the DIF they didn’t treat us like they should have. … I felt they didn’t give importance to the case. … A public prosecutor told me… well, I no longer remember what she said, harsh words. … I went back to the DIF and they said: “You are not one to decide that [your daughter should have an abortion].  You can give it up for adoption.”  They got angry.²

“Graciela Hernández” reported her father’s systematic rapes against her in Guanajuato in 2002 when she was sixteen years old.  As the result of the rapes, Hernández became pregnant and declared unequivocally that she wished to terminate her pregnancy.  According to representatives from nongovernmental organizations who provided emotional and legal support for Hernández, the public prosecutor later persuaded the adolescent girl to change her accusation against her father from rape to incest—in order for the father to get a shorter jail sentence, as incest is considered a less serious crime than rape.  Since abortion in Guanajuato only is legal after rape and not after incest the abortion was not authorized, and Hernández was forced to carry the pregnancy to term.  The official record describes her distress:

Then my father took me to a hostel. … And there my father said to me that I should take all my clothes off … and my father took all his clothes off ...  And my father started to caress my legs and all of my body.  And he penetrated me, and it hurt a lot when he penetrated me.  I cried and I said to my father that it hurt a lot. … And I asked him if I was no longer a virgin, and my father said that before he penetrated me, yes, but no longer. … After that time, it was every week that my father took me to different hotels outside the city of [name withheld].  And we had sex. … And with regard to my pregnancy, I want to declare that I am certain that the child that I am expecting is my father’s … because I never had [sex] with anyone else. … And I want to declare that I don’t want to have the child that I am expecting, because I will not be able to love it.  Because it is my father’s, I will not be able to love it.  And I also don’t know how it will come about, if [the pregnancy] will go wrong.  And I also don’t want it because I didn’t want to be pregnant, and that’s why I want you to help me to have an abortion, because as I already said, I don’t want to have this child, because it is my father’s and I don’t want it.³