tv Nightline ABC May 4, 2017 12:37am-1:08am PDT
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tonight, a special edition of "nightline." "femicide, the untold war." we journey to one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a woman. >> we're going on a ride-along with the military police. >> we're may cheechismo and gan culture breed violence. >> men can do anything they want with a woman. >> the tragic murder of a beauty queen a symbol for a nation of women living in fear. >> he hit you really hard. >> the crisis forcing thousands to seek shelter on our shores. on the front lines of the fight for change. to end the epidemic of femicide. this special edition of "nightline" "femicide, the untold war," will be right back.
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"nightline." "femicide, the untold war." >> good even. thanks for joining us. tonight we bring you inside a place where women are under seen. it's been called the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman. and it's not a distant land oceans away. it's only 2,000 miles from texas. which is why thousands of women are fleeing to our shores to escape a machismo culture racked
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by gang violence. we bring you to honduras to investigate femicide, an untold war. a small town girl with a megawatt smile. at only 19, maria jose alvarado catapulted from obscurity to be crowned miss hon do you remem e. the first flight of her life to london where she'd compete for the miss world title. her tiara dreams were never to be. instead, rows of weeping beauty queens sat mourning one of their own. >> maria, you are and will remain a star. >> reporter: just days before the competition, maria jose and her sister had been shot to death. their murders a national tragedy. turned international headline. >> murders of the reigning miss honduras and her sister -- >> reporter: but even their
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devastated mother says she knows the bitter truth. the only thing unusual about their murders was that people paid attention. honduras is a tropical land littered with churches, yet even under the ever-watchful eye of the virgin mary, women here are under attack. we're going on a ride-along with the military police. we're getting a close-up view. of the drug-fueled gang violence that has turned this country into a virtual war zone. but even the cops say women are the most disturbing casualties. >> his father was killed by gangs, his brother was killed at age 16, he himself was shot three times. yet he says it's the violence against women that's out of control. there's even a term for it.
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"femici "femicide." with one woman murdered every 16 hours in a nation smaller than ohio, honduras has one of the highest femicide rates in the world. it's a perfect storm of a sexist, machismo culture of gains, guns, girls, and a government unable to cope. this is a part of town known for gang activity but it's 10:00 in the morning and this is a murder that happened in broad daylight, out in the open. you can see the body is sort of half-covered right there. you can see his hands sticking out of the tarp. a short walk away, another crime scene. the kids seem unfazed by all this murder. they get used to it. here a man's power is often measured in bullets. even in this idyllic town where a young, bookish beauty queen became the country's most famous
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femicide victim. the night maria jose was killed she tagged along to a party for her sister's boyfriend's birthday. that boyfriend, 32-year-old putarco ruiz. police believe he shot sofia after a jealous argument, then turned his gun on her fleeing sister. excellent student. despite a slew of witnesses police believe ruiz brazenly hid their bodies. they were found a week later in a shallow grave. their older sister was there. their house now a shrine. cobwebs on trophies. beautiful smiles frozen in time. teresa says were it not for her daughter's fame, the police might not have bothered investigating at all. if she weren't a beauty queen, they wouldn't be interested in trying to solve her murder?
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police charged ruiz with the murders. he maintains his innocence and now, nearly three years later, his trial is finally under way. in fact, a verdict is expected tomorrow. now teresa and corey are living in hiding, afraid of retaliation from the killer. they hope to get asylum in the u.s., but know their chances are slim. the unholy violence of honduras has propelled a river of women and children towards america's southern border. part of what the u.n. has called an invisible refugee crisis. >> we are leaving an untold war. >> reporter: nisa medina is battling a culture where women, she says, are disposable. men are getting away with not just brutalizing women but killing them and not getting
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punished. >> because we are -- it's common. it's something that you can be expected of, leaving here. >> reporter: the threat too often comes from within a woman's own home. this is haiti hernandez, a 30-year-old mother of five. she lives with the horrific memories of the night her abusive husband brutally attacked her legs with a machete. the attack so savage, her husband had actually severed both her feet. >> he cut you here? he cut you? >> uh-huh. >> reporter: a ruthless attempt, she thinks, to steal her physical independence. do you think he went after your legs on purpose? or was he just trying to kill you? haiti is a true survivor. just a year later she walks with donated prosthetics. and even plays in an all-male wheelchair basketball league.
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as horrifying as her story is, in a heartbreaking way she's actually lucky. her attacker got 15 years in prison. despite soaring rates of femicide, rape, and domestic violence, an estimated 95% of these crimes go totally unpunished. we wanted to find out why so few women ever get justice here. so we went to the cops. here we run into another badly beaten woman. she's here to basically report she got beaten up by a neighbor. her name is ingrid. she's 24 years old. he hit you really hard. she said he hit her 30 times with a machete. the flat half of a machete, basically whipping her with the machete. i'm so sorry. i'm so sorry.
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what did he say while he was attacking you? he said that he was going to kill you. in front of your child. most women don't have faith in the police. ingrid is one of the brave ones. she wants a restraining order. but knows it may not help. do you feel like men get away with stuff like this? attacking women? promising to keep in touch, ingrid limps away. her fate uncertain. the restraining order is only as powerful as the police and the courts that are going to back it up. how powerful is that piece of paper in this country? >> how powerful is a bullet? is a bullet more powerful than a piece of paper? yes. >> reporter: we'd heard the government had formed a special headquarters for crimes against women. so we came to find out how they handle cases like ingrid's. but after three hours of waiting --
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>> this is the point place for reporting domestic violence in a country where the numbers are off the charts. yet there are less than a handful of people here reporting. we asked the women's d.a., maria mercedes bustello, to explain. if women really believed they could get justice here, wouldn't there be a line out the door? she admits that filing a complaint can take weeks. police lack basic resources. and there are places so dangerous the cops can't even go in without military backup. >> what's crazy is here's a woman whose department is supposed to protect women. but she says, listen, if your boyfriend is beating you and he's a member of a gang? you're signing your own death warrant to go to police. then we get a chance to see for
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ourselves what happens when the police do take action. okay, we're riding with the police to deliver the restraining order. his wife is accusing him of punching her in the face and in the ribs. the plan is to deliver the order at the factory where he works. but it takes us two hours to even find the place. the charges are serious. but the mood? surprisingly friendly. once they return, they tell us the man who signed the order wasn't the one they were looking for. they were satisfied giving it to his brother. how did they know the man they were looking for wasn't there? did they look for him? she tells us they asked for him nicely and were told he wasn't around. they told you he wasn't there, so -- you believe them? watching this unfold, it becomes clear to me why so many women feel helpless here. when we come back, has ingrid's
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restraining order done her any good? and the youngest victims of the untold war. then -- a growing movement. the women fighting back. with all the over-the-counter products i've used. enough! i've tried enough laxatives to cover the eastern seaboard. i've climbed a mount everest of fiber. probiotics? enough! (avo) if you've had enough, tell your doctor what you've tried and how long you've been at it. linzess works differently from laxatives. linzess treats adults with ibs with constipation or chronic constipation. it can help relieve your belly pain, and lets you have more frequent and complete bowel movements that are easier to pass. do not give linzess to children less than six, and it should not be given to children six to less than eighteen. it may harm them. don't take linzess if you have a bowel blockage. get immediate help if you develop unusual or severe stomach pain, especially with bloody or black stools. the most common side effect is diarrhea, sometimes severe. if it's severe stop taking linzess
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this special edition of "nightline," "femicide, the untold war," continues. >> reporter: here in honduras, inside the hallways of the biggest hospital, very young, very pregnant girls are waiting their turn in the adolescent pregnancy ward. 1 in every 4 pregnancies as girl 19 years or younger. what makes you scared?
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this girl is nervous. shy. nearly eight months pregnant. then again, she's only 15. your baby daddy, how old is he? many girls never get any sexual education. the morning-after pill is outlawed. an abortion could land you in prison. which is why some young honduran women like neesa medina are trying to overturn the law. seeing this as yet another injustice in a country that's been called the most dangerous place on earth to be a woman. >> every plan you have, every relationship you have, to be controlled by fear of violence, is not the way we should be living. >> reporter: we've been texting with ingrid, the battered young mother we met a few days earlier. we're going to the other side of town to meet with the woman we first met at the police station. she'd essentially been whipped by the flat side of a machete,
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brutalized by her neighbor. she is terrified. for good reason. there she is. so you're living in fear. because, she tells me, the police set her attacker free the same day she reported him. were you surprised when the police let him go? ingrid tells us she can't afford to leave her home. so unbelievably, with nowhere to go, she must continue to live by the man she believes may kill her. does it hurt? it hurts so much you can't sleep, yeah. how could you, it's all over your back. do you fear for your life? he basically gets away with beating you, no consequences. fear is an ever-present fact of life for so many women here. yet the government fails to provide shelters or safe houses.
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so families in the gravest danger, like this one, are at the mercy of private charities. the young daughter eager to approach us in halting english. what happened to your mom? >> she get sexual violence in our city. that we were live in. >> reporter: a teenager trying to explain how her mother was brutally raped by a powerful man in their small town. a man her mother says threatened her into silence. a terrifying story no mother would ever want to tell in front of her own children. but once she realized she was
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pregnant, she could no longer shield them. she was afraid to tell you she'd been raped? >> yes. and when the baby come to the house, i knew it. but i feel so scared, sad. about my mom and what's happening. but i know that god is going to help us. and i love my brother. >> has anyone suggested that you try to testify against this man and build a case against him? >> no. she tells me she believes he'd already killed another woman and didn't spend a day in prison. the irish charity that runs this shelter is helping this family relocate to another country, a safer place. but a far cry from the daughter's dreams of america. you'd like to go to america? >> yeah, we want to go live there because we know over there we're going to have more opportunities. >> and to be safe? >> yeah.
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>> reporter: their story, painfully insight into why so many women here feel they have to flee for their lives. in 2015, u.s. authorities found 82% of female asylum seekers from the region had credible fear of perse violence. but the trump administration's policies -- >> build the wall! >> reporter: will make it more difficult to look to our shores for safety. he signed an executive order cutting the number of refugees the u.s. will accept in half. which includes honduran women applying for asylum. >> you can ask any person from honduras who has traveled to another country. the first thing that you can hear is, hey, i walk on the streets at night. and that's the most exciting thing a woman can do when we travel. >> reporter: while so many are fleeing, neesa tells us some young feminists are holding their ground. tired of being silent, they're uniting under the battle cry
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translating to "not one less," referring to not one more femicide. it's spreading like wildlife across latin america, from argentina to mexico. thousands of women rising up, demanding no more femicide. at the front lines of this fight here, renowned rapper mikey graf. ♪ ♪ she's part of the all-female graffiti group the dolls clans. they use music and art to publicly speak out against the plague of machismo. making sure young women's voices are heard.
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the first step in a much bigger fight, a global cultural revolution. >> maybe we can get the young back and have a strong movement that can change the way we can see peace in this country. >> reporter: their hope that so many, like maria jose alvarado, will not have died in vain. we'll be right back. hi, i'm frank. i take movantik for oic, opioid-induced constipation.
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had a bad back injury, my doctor prescribed opioids which helped with the chronic pain, but backed me up big-time. tried prunes, laxatives, still constipated... had to talk to my doctor. she said, "how long you been holding this in?" (laughs) that was my movantik moment. my doctor told me that movantik is specifically designed for oic and can help you go more often. don't take movantik if you have a bowel blockage or a history of them. movantik may cause serious side effects, including symptoms of opioid withdrawal, severe stomach pain and/or diarrhea, and tears in the stomach or intestine. tell your doctor about any side effects and about medicines you take. movantik may interact with them causing side effects. why hold it in? have your movantik moment. talk to your doctor about opioid-induced constipation. if you can't afford your medication, astrazeneca may be able to help.
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