A six-year-old Guatemalan girl who was separated from her family by US immigration authorities and placed in a detention centre was reportedly sexually abused during her time in government custody.
The girl, who has been identified as D.L. in official documents, was abused by an older child at a shelter in Phoenix, Arizona, according to US magazine The Nation.
She was made to sign a "safety plan" after the first instance of abuse, which indicated she should take responsibility for maintaining “appropriate boundaries”, the magazine has reported.
The plan does not specify any changes in terms of supervision but indicates the girl was told about “good touch, bad touch”, a common approach for teaching children about abuse.
Southwest Key Programs, the company which runs the detention centre, contacted the girl’s father on June 11, and said another child had sexually abused his daughter and other girls.
Days later, the facility contacted D.L.’s father again and told him the same boy had hit and fondled the young girl.
A spokesperson for the family said the girl’s father asked to speak with a social worker but never heard back.
“I felt really horrible, I couldn’t do anything for her because we were separated,” the girl’s mother told The Nation. “She was so little, she was probably so scared. It was a total nightmare.”
D.L.’s mother told the magazine her daughter is still traumatised by what happened and was confused when she saw her mother again.
“She is still behaving following the rules of the detention centre… she wakes up at six and bathes and eats. She behaves like she is programmed,” she said.
“She didn’t know I was her mother. She thought I was another social worker.”
The family has since been reunited, but Southwest Key, which is a nonprofit organisation, has not yet responded to the report.
