19 teenage girls die in Guatemala shelter blaze

Relatives wait outside the Virgen de la Asunción children’s shelter, in San Jose Pinula, Guatemala, on Wednesday, March 8, 2017. At least 19 people have been found dead after a fire at the shelter, which was created to house children who were victims of abuse, homelessness or who had completed sentences at youth detention centers and had nowhere else to go, the spokesman for Guatemala’s volunteer fire departments said. AP

SAN JOSÉ PINULA, Guatemala — At least 19 teenage girls died Wednesday in a fire in an overcrowded Guatemala shelter for children under government care, following an overnight rebellion against staff accused of sexual abuse and other maltreatment.

All those killed were aged between 14 and 17.

“For the moment we have confirmation of 19 girls killed,” the secretary general of the public ministry, Mayra Veliz, told reporters.

Seventeen of the bodies were charred. The condition of the other two victims was unknown. “We haven’t yet processed all of the scene,” Veliz said.

Another 25 people were injured, suffering first-, second- and third-degree burns, according to the firefighting service. They were taken to hospitals in Guatemala City.

The fire broke out in the adolescent female wing of the state-run Virgin of the Assumption Safe Home.

The facility, built in 2006, is located in San Jose Pinula, a village 10 kilometers (six miles) east of the capital Guatemala City.

The blaze was believed to have started during disturbances in the packed center, which holds nearly double the 400 people it was designed to house.

“They were serving food to the teenagers when some of them started a fire in a mattress and that’s how the fire was set,” said Abner Paredes, a prosecutor defending children’s rights.

A ‘time bomb’

“It was a ticking time bomb. This was to be expected,” one of the center’s former employees, Angel Cardenas, said outside.

He said he had lodged several warnings about conditions inside.

At the entrance of the facility, whose imposing, barbed wire-topped concrete wall showed no sign of the drama inside, crying relatives crowded the entrance in search of news of the children kept there. Police blocked access to them and to journalists.

A few survivors were seen hugging kin on the pine tree-lined road. But many other family members were left with no news.

“They don’t want to give any information at all,” stormed Rosa Aguirre, a 22-year-old street vendor who had rushed from the capital to see if her two sisters, aged 13 and 15, and her 17-year-old brother were among the casualties.

She said many frustrated people had gone to the hospitals to see if their relatives were there.

Aguirre said she, too, had lodged complaints about how the center’s charges were treated, but received no attention.

She said brawls broke out often, and her brother was sometimes put in a dark isolation cell nicknamed the “chicken coop.” She said she had tried in vain to be given custody of her siblings after their mother’s death four months ago.

Guatemalan media said the shelters’ occupants had revolted overnight and into Wednesday against alleged sexual abuse by staff, and over poor food and conditions.

The United Nations children’s fund UNICEF called the fire and the deaths a “tragedy.” It added in a Twitter post that “these children and adolescents must be protected.”

The center, supervised by state authorities, hosts minors under age 18 who are victims of domestic violence or found living on the street.

They are sent there by court order and are under the responsibility of the social welfare ministry.

The shelter has been the target of multiple complaints alleging abuse. Dozens of children have run away in the past year, reportedly to escape ill treatment inside.

Calls to close shelter

Guatemala’s prosecutor for upholding children’s rights, Hilda Morales, told reporters she was requesting the shelter be closed due to welfare authorities’ inability to manage it.

“We are going to ask for the immediate closure of the center, and attribute administrative and criminal responsibility against those in charge of the center for not fulfilling their duty,” she said.

She noted that last year the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights had found in favor of several adolescents who had alleged maltreatment and sexual abuse in the shelter.

She stressed that those sent to the center should receive “better protection” than in their families where they were abused.

Another prosecutor tasked with protecting children in the country, Harold Flores, told the radio station Emisoras Unidas that since last year complaints had surged against the shelter over minors fleeing to escape alleged sexual abuse there.

He said an investigation was underway to find the reasons and those responsible for Wednesday’s tragedy.

In Guatemala’s Congress, lawmakers held a minute of silence for the victims of the fire before demanding those in charge of the center be dismissed. CBB