“Justice is Afraid of the Priest’s Robe”: Rape and power in Nicaragua

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In a central Nicaraguan town in 2014, not far from the birthplace of revolutionary hero Augusto Sandino, Lucia, 15, had been suffering from stomach pains. After several days of discomfort, her mother walked her to a nearby health clinic, where a doctor informed them that Lucia was pregnant.

Lucia’s mother was shocked. Nicaragua has one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the world, but Lucia didn’t have a boyfriend and spent the little time she wasn’t doing homework singing in the parish church and going on youth mission trips.

As they walked home from the doctor, Lucia’s mother begged her to disclose who the father was. The girl broke into tears and relented: It was the 55-year-old priest who ran the choir and youth program. He had been raping Lucia since she was 13.

Once Lucia, who asked not to be identified by her real name, discovered she was pregnant, she didn’t have many options. Since 2006, abortion has been illegal under all circumstances in Nicaragua. Women who consent to an abortion can be sentenced to one to two years in prison, and anyone performing the procedure faces up to six years behind bars and a seven-year ban on practicing medicine. Elective abortion was never legal in Nicaragua, but from 1837 until a decade ago, so-called “therapeutic abortions” were permitted in cases of rape or when the mother’s life was at risk.

The policy shift occurred during the 2006 presidential campaign when Sandinista party leader Daniel Ortega suddenly threw his support behind a total ban on abortion. Ortega was president of Nicaragua in the 1980s after the country’s revolution and had been a self-avowed atheist. But after being voted out of office in 1990, he initiated a public conversion. He started to attend church and later married his longtime partner in a Catholic ceremony. Ortega’s transformation proceeded in step with his party’s, which began using religious rhetoric and symbols, adopting its current slogan—“Christian, socialist, solidarity”—in 2011. Eleven days after the passage of the 2006 law criminalizing abortion, Ortega won the presidential election.

Unlike in El Salvador, where hundreds of women are estimated to have been jailed since the country’s total abortion ban went into effect in 1998, Nicaraguan authorities seem reluctant to press charges. But the government hasn’t released statistics on abortion-related prosecutions and convictions, making it difficult to know whether the law is being enforced. The threat of jail time and losing their license to practice medicine, though, is enough to keep most doctors from carrying out the procedure. Abortion has been pushed underground and women suffering complications from clandestine procedures are often afraid to seek medical help. Meanwhile, women’s rights groups warn that the ban’s reverberations go beyond abortion; the law tells men they can abuse women without fear of legal repercussions.

“The therapeutic abortion ban sent a message of impunity that reinforced the aggressor,” Elia Palacios told me. “The thing is power. Society has taught that men have power over women’s bodies.”

“THE NATURALIZATION OF SEXUAL ABUSE”

Palacios runs the Axayacatl Association of Women, which serves women in the community who often talk about their experiences of abuse here for the first time. The office in the city of Masaya resembles a traditional Nicaraguan home complete with a large, colorful kitchen, hammocks, and the type of wooden rocking chairs Nicaraguans put out on the street in the evening to people-watch and chat with passersby. Everything is set up to ensure those who walk through the door feel comfortable enough to stay. This is where Lucia came to learn about her legal options.

Palacios said that since the abortion ban’s passage, the organization has seen a jump in the number of women reporting abuse. As I sat with her, she showed me one of the many text messages on her phone from local women describing their mistreatment and asking her what to...