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URL copied to clipboard When María Amarilla was eleven years old, she was sexually abused by a family member. “For years I remained silent because I didn’t know it was wrong and didn’t know who to talk to,” she told openDemocracy. The abuse “lasted for a while, and when my school organised a spiritual retreat I tried to talk to someone, but everything the girls heard there was about our ‘sins’: the clothes we wore, the words we used. So I shut up.” At the age of fifteen, Amarilla – who is now a spokesperson for the National Union of Student Centers of Paraguay – reported the abuse to police, “but trauma and psychological damage were still there. There’s no support from institutions.” ....
URL copied to clipboard Feminist investigative journalism fellows are at the heart of openDemocracy’s Tracking the Backlash project, which has two goals – to expose and challenge the backlash against universal human rights, and to challenge exclusion in the media. In 2018, we launched our new fellowship programme for young women and LGBTIQ people, to help them develop their skills and confidence in investigative journalism while working on groundbreaking projects. Each fellowship lasts six months, with each fellow being mentored by a more senior journalist. Every year, these opportunities receive hundreds of applications from around the world, and so far we have trained fellows from Armenia, Georgia, Italy, Kenya, Mexico, Uganda, the UK and the US. ....