Reports of beatings, sexual abuse and forcible rape by adult inmates were rife. It is these children's tragic, often brief existence, and the Honduran government's troubling disregard for its own laws, that I came back to examine. Lung-searing pollution hangs over the city, trapped between the rising heat and the cooling downdrafts gliding from the outlying cliffs. Other visions, distinctly more troubling, are replayed before me. Stray dogs, emaciated and mangy, many bloodied in turf wars, still roam the city's arteries in search of food.
Vultures soar overhead, awaiting death.
And children, children, hundreds of children, as if regurgitated from the entrails of hell keep spilling onto the streets. Their numbers have swollen in the past two years. They amble in public parks, skulk in the maze of open markets, loiter aimlessly along river banks. Sharpened by fear, survival regulates their existence. They will sell themselves for a meal, a hot shower, a clean bed, a few grams of Resistol.