As a young woman, Lidia was abused for a period of over three years at the hands of a transnational gang operating in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The gang, known as Barrio 18, had murdered her brother and subsequently claimed her as property as further punishment of her family. Over the course of the following three years, she was forced to engage in conjugal visits with one of the gang’s leaders in prison under threat of death. After fleeing her abuse, Barrio 18 kidnapped a member of her family and tortured him, forcing her to return. She was repeatedly raped, physically abused and forced into drug trafficking at the hands of the gang (Boerman and Golob, 2020:251). Unfortunately, Lidia’s case is not a unique one. Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) is endemic to Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, known as the ‘Northern Triangle of Central America’ (NTCA), (Bozmosci, 2021). Indeed, it is so severe and widespread across the region that it has been called the worlds’ ‘epicentre for gender- based violence’ and has been classified as a humanitarian crisis (Bozmosci, 2021). All three countries in the NTCA region have some of the highest rates of femicide worldwide, illustrated by reports that a woman is murdered every 18 hours in El Salvador and that GBV is the second leading cause of death for women in Honduras (Obinna, 2020). This causes issues not only within the countries themselves, but as data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) shows, contributes to displacement as well. The UNHCR estimates that SGBV is contributing to the annual displacement of some 500,000 people from the NTCA, amounting to some 9% of the overall population (UNHCR, 2015; Médecins Sans Frontiers, 2017). This is corroborated by findings from Kennedy (2014) who states that of 319 Salvadoran refugees interviewed, 61% said they were fleeing for fear of rape, sexual abuse or enforced disappearance.
The present dissertation has thus developed three primary aims. First, it aims to increase western awareness and understanding of the severity of violence experienced by women in the NTCA, as knowledge of the phenomenon remains fairly limited. Second, it aims to further develop the growing base of academic literature concerning gang-perpetrated SGBV which despite growing interest is still underdeveloped. Finally, the study aims to provide a holistic, multi-disciplinary understanding of this phenomenon. At present, the existing literature base tends emphasise one perspective, either a legal, socio-political or historical. However, the present study will address
both the individual offenders and victims from a forensic psychological perspective, the cultural context both within and external to NTCA maras from a sociological and criminological perspective, as well as situating this within the historical context in which these crimes are taking place.
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