Henrik Saxgren

Groups of young street girls were living with poor old men in the shantytown homes.
Twelve and thirteen-year-old girls paid rent to sixty-year-old men with sex. Neighbors and the authorities did not intervene because they simply did not care. I was very upset by these conditions, and I could not understand how they had deteriorated so badly.

It took me four years to realize that Nicaragua had become a country without fathers. The poor Nicaraguan men had little social energy left. Only on time in this century they had taken full responsibility as fathers, husbands and men.

During the revolution, these men gave themselves in for a dream. For a short moment (in historical terms) they actually believed, they could build a society without poverty for their children. But as the revolution failed, they felt betrayed. Today it seems that little social responsibility remains.

This social disillusion marks all members of society, especially the poorer men. Poverty is a serious killer, but this is not the sole cause of Nicaraguan woes. Conditions are not as severe in other third world countries, even though poverty is comparative.

The absence of fathers seems specific striking in Nicaragua and this causes confused, divided, and broken families. Public assistance is unavailable. Single mothers run the majority of families without any opportunities for employment, and many only see one way to secure the little income they can find by means of prostitution.

So how do the young grow up in a society where prostitution relates to responsibility? A society where mothers disregard their partners' sexual abuse of their daughters for fear of losing the men.

My book, Solomons House, work up this questions and put the church on trial.