Source: ASSIST News Service, October 11, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
COVID-19 has triggered a \u201cshadow pandemic\u201d of sexual abuse, violence, and exploitation against girls, a shocking new report reveals on International Day of the Girl Child, October 11.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
More than ever, girls face multiple threats to their safety, including sexual predators online, sex trafficking, and forced child marriage, says the report Young Victims Remain Hidden in the Pandemic\u2019s Shadow<\/a> by mission organization GFA World (also known as Gospel for Asia). International Day of the Girl Child is an annual awareness event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In more than 130 countries\u2014including the US\u2014it\u2019s legal for girls to marry under the age of 18. In North Carolina and Alaska, a girl can marry at 14 if she\u2019s pregnant. In North Carolina, a 57-year-old man applied to marry a 17-year-old girl, the report says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Worldwide, COVID-19 is accelerating a \u201cglobal crisis for girls,\u201d with surging joblessness and poverty putting pressure on struggling parents to marry off their daughters in their mid-teens or younger, the report says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Globally, national lockdowns have disrupted schooling for millions of girls and left them exposed to exploitation and a greater risk of getting pregnant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the full story<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: ASSIST News Service, October 11, 2021 COVID-19 has triggered a \u201cshadow pandemic\u201d of sexual abuse, violence, and exploitation against girls, a shocking new report reveals on International Day of the Girl Child, October 11. More than ever, girls face multiple threats to their safety, including sexual predators online, sex trafficking, and forced child marriage, … Continue reading Girls Exposed to \u201cShadow Pandemic\u201d of Sexual Abuse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10534"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10535,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10534\/revisions\/10535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}