For years, Mayerlin Vergara Perez features strived to help you countless small survivors of erectile assault, many of them refugees, rebuild their unique everyday lives.

UNHCR’s Nansen Refugee prize Laureate 2020 hugs a young survivor of sexual misapplication. © UNHCR/Nicolo Filippo Rosso

Mayerlin Vergara Perez rests together with her contact the pillow.

While the director of your house for lots of children and teenagers who may have endured erotic assault and victimization in Riohacha, on Colombia’s easterly border with Venezuela, she never realizes when this dish might get summoned to resolve a crisis.

Rescued from your streets edges, brothels and pubs wherein these are generally forced into sex-related exploitation – often by personal trafficking channels – or taken out of couples distorted by use, your kids under Mayerlin’s proper care have gone through practically unimaginable shock. Their own healing up process try an extended and tumultuous one.

“Sexual assault features all but damaged their capability to desired. it is stolen his or her teeth and packed all of these with serious pain, anguish and anxieties,” stated Mayerlin, an exciting 45-year-old which passes by the nickname Maye. Continue reading →