The Girl Who Broke Free: Building A New Life In America #15Girls

The week she turned 15, Rosi got an amazing birthday present. She was in a government shelter in New York.

And then her dad walked in. It was the first time she'd seen him in almost four years.

"He brought me a big cake as a present. It was vanilla," she says.

"She was wearing jeans, tennis shoes, and this little collared blouse," her dad remembers and laughs.

Until her dad showed up, Rosi had been thinking she should just go back to Guatemala. That would have meant facing the nightmare she'd run away from. Rosi still has trouble talking about it. She calls it "lo que pasó" or "the thing that happened."

Lo que pasó began when her dad first got to the U.S. nearly a decade ago. He had several roommates. One of them saw pictures of Rosi and became obsessed with her. He's her nightmare, and the reason we aren't using Rosi's full name or the names of anyone in her family. They're still worried about this man, who went back to Guatemala and started tracking Rosi down. She was 13. He was 31. He wanted to marry her.

Guatemalan law allows girls under 14 to marry if the mom or dad says it's okay. The U.N. has raised alarm over child marriages in Guatemala. The organization Refugio De La Niñez, which fights for the human rights of Guatemalan children, says in most of the marriages, the man is twice or three times his wife's age.

When Rosi's dad found out about his roommate's mission, he was furious. "I tried to stop it," he says. "If you don't want to have a problem, stay away from my home, I told him."

The man's answer left him cold: " 'You are there. And I am here.' Just like that."

Rosi's dad pauses. "The thing is, in our country, everything gets fixed with money."

And this guy had American money. The dad thinks Rosi's mom was seduced by this. Rosi tells me her mom made her marry the guy. Rosi snarls when she talks about him; she calls him "a disgusting old man."

"I wanted to be dead rather than live through that," says Rosi, lowering her voice. "I tried killing myself with a knife. But an aunt found me and told me, 'Don't do it, it's going to be okay.' "

But it wasn't okay. Now that he had his child bride, Rosi's husband decided to head back to the U.S. with her. Neither of them had papers to cross legally. As they attempted to walk over the U.S.-Mexico border Rosi got her break: Border patrol agents intercepted them. She never saw her husband again.

She ended up in a a government shelter for unaccompanied minors in California. Then Texas. Eventually she was transferred to New York, where her dad was finally able to come get her. When she was released, he took her home to Pennsylvania, where he'd been living for years.

Rosi's ordeal was over. But that doesn't mean everything was all right.

I meet Rosi and her dad at the small apartment they share with another migrant. It's at the edge of an industrial area, where a lot of refugees and migrants live. It's a crisp autumn day, and outside the trees are shivering. Inside it's a sauna from all the cooking. Rosi makes a mean pollo sudado — chicken stew. She also piles my plate with rice, salad and steamed plantains with sugar.

She tells me that in the months after being released to her father, she barely ate: "All I did was cry. I felt really depressed. I didn't want to speak to men, I hated them. I asked myself, why is this happening to me?"

Like so many kids who come to the U.S. as migrants, Rosi felt lost. Her lawyer referred her to a woman named Cathi Tillamn.

Tillman is the executive director of La Puerta Abierta, an organization that provides mental health care for refugee and migrant communities. She says five years ago, maybe 10 percent of their referrals where youth. These days it's about 60 percent.

Rosi got a green card and managed to get the marriage annulled. She recently finished high school and plans to go to nursing school. Her father still has no papers.

Tillman says when she first met Rosi, she was lucky to get a few words out of her. Rosi started attending a youth group. One of the few things Rosi opened up about was her love of dance and music — specifically bachata, romantic music from the Dominican Republic.

"And she decided one day to turn on some music, and she started dancing" Tillman remembers. "There where a couple of other girls that she'd become friendly with and we were all laughing."

Maybe it was the melancholy Caribbean guitar plucks or being around people who cared about her, but something switched. Rosi was ready to talk about "the thing that happened" in Guatemala.

It wasn't easy. "The first time, I couldn't talk," she says. "I just cried and cried with my therapist. And she told me to get it all out, what I had inside of me."

That was four years ago. Rosi still speaks to Tillman and checks in with La Puerta Abierta a few times a month.

Rosi is 19 now. She has woven a network of people who care about her, deeply. And life has changed. In the picture she shows me, the one from when she'd recently gotten to the U.S., she looks ghostly, almost shocked. She says it makes her sad to think that "I didn't have much of a childhood."

Maybe that's why she's so upbeat now. She laughs a lot and has a wicked sense of humor: She likes making dramatic pronouncements like "next year I'm buying a car" and following them with a "yeah, right."

"Farewell Papa!" she announces somewhat theatrically as we leave the house to look at some clothing. She smiles mischeviously, and from the staircase adds: "I'm going to the store, be right back."

We go to H & M. Rosi loves this store and comes by whenever she has some extra money. She picks out lacy, girly blouses and wrinkles her nose at the skull print sweatshirt I've grabbed. We talk about normal stuff — her crush on Bachata singer Romeo Santos. She's started weight lifting and would like to have J-Lo or Shakira's body. She has a boyfriend but she doesn't want kids until she has a nursing career. Up until recently she worked at a restaurant, but is now applying to jobs in nursing.

I ask her if she's forgiven her mother. Rosi pauses, and says, "Well, you only get one mother." Still, they aren't on speaking terms.

With her dad, it's a different story: they adore each other. She chastises him for standing outside in the cold; she pushes him to have seconds at mealtime and gently teases him about wanting to join her gym only so he can use the sauna. You wonder who saved whom.

"Imagine, when she was in Texas," Rosi's dad tells me, "I could only speak to her for 15 minutes, every eight days — 15 minutes," he marvels.

"I'd tell her, 'How are you my daughter, how are you my beautiful girl?' And she would say, 'Don't be sad, papa, I'm going to be OK.' And I'd say 'OK, I'm here waiting for you. I'm fighting for you.' "

Cathi Tillman says it's not your run-of-the-mill happy ending, but it's close enough. "There isn't necessarily closure. There's peace. There's reconciliation. How do you close a wound that's 100 miles wide? Sometimes you just let it scab over, you take care of it and you go on with your life."

Outside the store, Rosi and I part ways. She told her dad she'd be home a while ago, and he gets worried if she's even a little bit late.

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