RIGHTS-SIERRA LEONE: Rape Victims Return To School

By Lansana Fofana Reprint | | Print |

Lansana Fofana

FREETOWN, Nov 6 1999 (IPS) - While Sierra Leone’s government and former rebels are struggling to implement the July 7 peace accord, which brought to an end eight years of bloody civil war in their country, non-governmental organisations (ngos) on the other hand, are trying to help hundreds of victims of rape, themselves survivors of the conflict.

The forum for African Women’s Educationists (FAWE) has taken the lead in the rehabilitation of rape victims and helping those of school-going age to return to school.

FAWE’s top official in Sierra Leone, Christiana Thorpe, says 1,551 cases have been recorded by her organisation and that the victims — both boys and girls — are being counselled, and treated in preparation for their return to school.

“Their reaction usually is one of shyness because in our culture to talk about rape is a taboo, although we are trying to demystify it,” says Beatrice Parkinson, a counsellor at FAWE.

“When these teenage clients are brought to me for counselling, I coax them into understanding the benefits for them in the FAWE Rape Victims Programme, such as opportunities for returning to school and boarding for unaccompanied ones, and also training for the girls to become useful in society and become good mothers,” she adds.

Parkinson says the bulk of the rape victims, aged between 10 and 16, were abducted by rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) and the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) who jointly invaded the capital Freetown, in January.

The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Children Associated with War (CAW) have put the number of children abducted during the invasion at 3,000.

Even with the signing of a peace agreement, rebel forces who are yet to be disarmed and demobilised, are believed to still be holding as hostages more than half that number in their jungles using some as cannon fodders and sex slaves.

In August, the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Children and Armed Conflict, Olara Otunnu, visited Sierra Leone and urged the rebels to release all abducted children. But this plea is yet to be honoured by the rebel leadership, which keeps renewing promises.

No more than 300 of the children have so far been released with a quarter of that number complaining of having been raped and impregnated. Their stories are usually horrific and sometimes victims break down narrating their ordeals.

One of them, 14-year-old Memuna told IPS amidst tears: “Six fierce-looking armed rebels stormed our house at Kissy (eastern Freetown) on January 26, set it on fire after looting it, and took me and my 12 year old sister along with them”.

Memuna explained that she was gang-raped, forced to do the cooking and cleaning for the rebels and often beaten when she complained of exhaustion. “This sad memory still lingers on my mind and I am definitely bitter against my captors and tormentors”, she added.

Memuna was impregnated, like dozens of other abductees, and is now carrying an unwanted pregnancy while hoping that she would soon return to school.

“That is my dream now. My parents were murdered by the rebels in January, our family home razed to the ground, and here I am orphaned and with no future,” she said.

FAWE has hired medical doctors to treat patients and has also embarked on a massive sensitisation tour of schools and communities, radio and television campaigns to urge rape victims to register with it for free assistance.

One of the surgeons dealing with rape victims, Gassama, of the Medical Department in Freetown, says: “I have treated more than 100 rape victims and they report almost on a daily basis. Some are pregnant and seek termination, while others are serious cases that demand operation for prolapse, i.e. the womb came out after gang-raping”.

Some analysts believe that these abuses — the amputation of limbs of civilians and other war crimes — may be a hiccup on the road to national reconciliation.

Local rights groups have joined Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch demanding to bring to book the perpetrators, so as to break the cycle of impurity. But, in the July 7 peace accord, signed in the Togolese capital of Lome, the combatants were offered blanket amnesty and immunity from prosecution.

FAWE also has called on the authorities to try and bring to justice rapists to act as a deterrent. The first major case ended last week when 65-year-old Sorie Bangura was sentenced to ten years for raping an 11-year-old girl.

FAWE, with funding from Medicins Sans Frontiers (Holland) and Unicef, has started returning some of the rape victims to school, while placing unaccompanied children in care homes.