The project of the Augustinian-Recollect Family in Fortaleza (Brazil) that offers a new life to girls and teens who are victims of abuse has managed to treat 225 beneficiaries in all this time, with a maximum occupancy of 36 places.
August 27, the feast of Saint Monica, mother of Saint Augustine, is the anniversary of the creation of the Saint Monica’s Home, a refuge and safe rehabilitation space for girls and adolescents who, sent by the judicial authorities, come from abusive backgrounds.
The objective is to provide them with comprehensive education and healing of the physical and psychological wounds suffered, the necessary tools to face the future with confidence, freedom and autonomy after the hell they have lived through.
Saint Monica is a significant figure: she managed to get her son Augustine, who lived in a sea of doubts and making random decisions without any success or future, back on a vital path that led him not only to personal stability, but to forge a lifestyle imitated and adhered to by thousands of lives throughout history, until today.
The beneficiaries of the Saint Monica’s Home have suffered one or more of these things at the same time: abuse, abandonment, dropping out of school, family neglect, violence, labor or sexual exploitation, hunger, homelessness…
And all of this has reached such a serious level and with such consequences that a juvenile judge or a guardianship council for children and adolescents has decided to move them to a safe place, far from the aggressors, where they could recover their lives and safeguard their rights.
The problem until 2009, fifteen years ago, is that there was no such place in the entire State of Ceará, neither public nor private. That is to say, there was nowhere to take these victims, even if a judge decided that they should no longer be with their aggressors.
The Augustinian Recollect Family, after ten years of working with the most disadvantaged and aware of this serious problem due to its proximity and pastoral work with families in the depressed areas of the city, decided to start one.
Since then, 225 girls and adolescents have passed through the Saint Monica’s Home in its 15 years of existence. These are not numbers, they are real lives, girls with names and surnames, each one with their story of pain, their struggle to adapt to new ways and new rules, their slow but gradual recovery.
The daily care of these girls has involved more than 30,000 procedures of all kinds: legal, medical, social-assistance, pedagogical, psychological… It includes therapies, visits to their families, recovery of school life and overcoming failure, accompaniment in vocational training, reinforcement classes, adapted courses…
For the Augustinian Recollect Family it has also meant a novelty, because it represents materializing the charismatic values of this religious Family (community, interiority, charity, mission) in a new and striking context, full of challenges.
The Saint Monica’s Home has also been a true hinge of union of the Augustinian Recollect Family with the local society and with the ecclesiastical institutions. Thus, it is located within the Uirapuru Spiritual Condominium which, in a green area in the center of Fortaleza, hosts various social projects of the Church in the capital of Ceara.
It has also forced the project managers to find the right staff, trained and qualified for such a special, specific and complex task, which includes social assistance, specialized psychological assistance, relations with the judiciary and the legislative and executive powers, reception and training of volunteers, continued need for financial resources and a network to complement the attention of all those needs that appear.
Happy celebration and spur to awareness
On August 27, the Saint Monica’s Home celebrated its 15 years of life with emotion and gratitude together with many friends, benefactors and companions on the journey: the other institutions of the Uirapuru Spiritual Condominium, friendly companies, volunteers, collaborators, the Augustinian Recollect Secular Fraternity… And, of course, current and past beneficiaries, professional workers and management team.
There was a moment of spiritual celebration with a Eucharist and a dinner that ended with a song congratulating the anniversary and a large cake. There was an atmosphere of fraternity, affection and satisfaction for the effort made in these 15 years.
The following day, August 28, the solemnity of St. Augustine, the celebrations continued, given the Augustinian charisma of the social project. It was a more intimate day for the members of the project, with a Eucharist and a special meal full of surprises.
“These 15 years are a living testimony that love, care and faith can transform lives and allow the construction of a better future for our beneficiaries who, otherwise, would have been condemned to oblivion, abandonment and lives full of constant suffering.
We remain firm in our mission, with our eyes set on the future and with the happy and grateful memory of what we have already done. But there is still much, much to do, because the scourge against which we fight, the nightmare and hell that our beneficiaries have gone through, far from stopping, is increasing. We can say that the Saint Monica’s Home, despite ourselves, is even more necessary today, 15 years later.”
Motion of congratulations from the Legislative Assembly
Because this anniversary, a request for a “Motion of praise and joy” was presented to the Legislative Assembly of Ceara for the Saint Monica’s Home on its 15th anniversary “promoting the rescue and care of girls and adolescents who are victims of sexual exploitation.”
This was indicated by state deputy Celio Studart (PSD/CE) to the president of the Assembly, for the “dignified, respectable and honorable” actions of the Saint Monica’s Home “in the face of the dramatic situation of vulnerability and violence for girls and adolescents from 7 to 18 years old in the city of Fortaleza.”
The Home, says the deputy, “reduces the social and family risk” in its beneficiaries and protects them from other situations of vulnerability in their social context, such as “extreme poverty and psychological and sexual abuse.”
The MP also recalls the extensive “psychosocial work with families to promote them in a comprehensive context, which includes maintaining family ties in order to achieve future reintegration” but first eliminating any risk of repeating any aggression.
