—not the other way around. By Jeanna Pearson She listened to the sound of laughter drifting down the street. School was over; and her three brothers had not yet returned from the shop. Inside the old shack they called home, she was still sprawled across the bed, her skirt clenched tightly in her hands as she tried to come to grips with what had just happened—she was raped. Not by a stranger; not even by a cousin but by man she called daddy.Mellissa (not her real name) was nine years old when she was first raped by her step-father. It was her first sexual encounter, one that stretched on for a period of years. Living in a small shack with little food and a mother who was hardly home, Mellissa had no one to tell. Soon she was failing school. Most of her time was spent “liming” on the road.“I remember him coming into the bedroom. He just send my brothers to buy sweetie. He said something about wanting to sex me. I didn’t know what sex was until he was on top of me. I knew it was wrong and I told him to stop…I even fight him but all he said was ‘just now. I gon done just now!’”“I remember every time after that. I told no one. Not even my mother. I was scared and I was angry. Every time he touched me I hated him more and more. Eventually I stopped begging him to stop and I just ignored him as he did what he had to do,” she said.Mellissa’s father was the sole bread-winner. With her mother unemployed, he called the shots. Many days they didn’t go to school. There were many days when they wouldn’t know when their next meal was going to come from.At 11 years old she was taken away from her parents and placed in a children’s home. Her case worker was the first person to hear her story. “When I told her what he had done to me she said I couldn’t go home. But although I hated my step-father I wanted to be home with my mother,” she said, recalling that she used to save all her money to escape.“I would get away and go right back home. And when I did he would rape me again and again,” she said dejectedly.“I can’t remember the number of times I ran away. But after a while I didn’t want to go home. I found the streets to be better. One of my friends introduced me to life on the streets. She would get me hooked up with other friends and they would take me out and buy drinks and food. But afterwards they would carry me to a hotel, gimme money and tell me what they want me do to them,” she stated.Mellissa was 14 years-old when she was introduced to prostitution by another teenage girl.“Guess I got tired of people saying every time I run back home that I like it. Nobody likes being screwed by their own father. Show me one person I would say they lying.”At 17-years-old, Mellissa got pregnant. Now, she lives in fear that she might be HIV positive. “Thinking about it makes me frighten. I think that if I don’t take the tablets I would get fine and then I would die. Then who would take care of my baby? I don’t have anyone. I won’t know if he will be okay…or what will happen to him.”Mellissa was a prostitute for four years,China Jerseys Cheap, up until she got pregnant. “I didn’t trust any other way out. People say get an education but getting an education is not that easy. It’s just like getting work. Hard…I don’t have any CXC or proper grades in school to get a nice job. And I don’t want to go back to the streets so I beg for me and my son,Nike Air Max Ale,” she said.“I’m not proud to say it but there isn’t any way out. I feel shame doing what I do but it’s better than getting sex with different men,Man Utd New Kit 2018/19,” she added.Child Counsellor Abbigale Loncke told Kaieteur News that there are many talks that if a teen gets pregnant she becomes poor. She said that while teen childbearing does put pressure on a girl’s socioeconomic status, it does not necessarily conclude to poverty.“Most of the time these girls are already a part of the poorer population,Maglia Inter 2018 19 Bambino, living in depressed communities,Maglia Inter 2019, with four to six siblings. There isn’t a chance for an education and most times there isn’t money to send them to school,” she said.She said research has consistently revealed that teen childbearing itself has minute impact on a young woman’s economic future. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) State of the World Population 2013 report said that impoverished, uneducated girls living in rural areas are more likely to become pregnant than other girls who are educated and wealthy.Loncke stated that while there is an incessant need to curb teenage pregnancy in Guyana, the relevant authorities need to first look at the underlying areas that cause this dilemma. “And poverty is at the top,Cheap Authentic Jerseys, along with a lack of sexual education and school drop-outs,” she said.These three factors strip the teenage girl of knowledge, leaving her exposed to making dangerous choices.With Guyana ranking second in the Caribbean and South America for teenage pregnancy it is no surprised that an estimated 43% of its population falls below the poverty line.Loncke said these teens have no sort of exposure to contraceptives and sexual education. “Poverty and oppression is all they know. And most of them when they leave the children homes don’t have anywhere else to go so they often end up doing what they did before.”Loncke explained that since most of these girls are looking for a “daddy figure” in their lives they cling to any man that gives them attention— which poses a great risk for pregnancy and sometimes repeated pregnancies.“These girls need the support of schools and counselors. They need to know what would happen if they have unprotected sex; what a contraceptive is and how to use it; they need to know that when a man tells them that they are allergic to condoms or it don’t feel as good as it is bare, it is a trick.”She said Guyana needs to stop saying that “these young girls cause this on themselves” and address the issues of poverty and sex education and reproductive health in schools and at home. “Or else we will end up with a burden on the social system,’ she added.“We don’t need to change who they are. We need to offer them a safe haven…someplace where they can receive support for themselves and their babies,” Loncke said.She added it was a cultural norm for parents to skirt questions about sex with their children and it is dangerous since it leaves them learn about it through the internet. “We need to break this taboo and stop letting the internet teach our children about sex. A lot of these young girls are emotionally caught up in a cloud about sex and we got to get them before they get on that cloud with a guy,” she said.Loncke recalled a young teen in one of the children’s homes who came from a depressed family. The girl’s mother was a prostitute and the teen would be left to wander the streets until she was picked up by the Child Care and Protection Agency.This teen, she said, ran away from the children’s home. “She said that she wanted to be like her mother. Her mother died on the streets while she became a prostitute. Now she is pregnant and has no proper health care or job to support her baby. This proves that their minds are conditioned to poverty…and whatever they were exposed to.”Mellissa said that it was hard for her to put the rape and prostitution behind her. “I saw so much when I was young. I can’t remember how many men I had sex with and I regret it all,” she said.UNFPA Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said it perfectly: “the reality is that adolescent pregnancy is most often not the result of a deliberate choice,Wholesale Jerseys China, but rather the absence of choices, and of circumstances beyond a girl’s control.”