Defilement at the Police station

Apr 21, 2013

Help!” a young boy, who looked not more than 10 years, approached me at Old Kampala Police Station. “They are saying that I made her pregnant, but how?” the boy wondered.

By Gladys Kalibbala

SUNDAY VISION - Help!” a young boy, who looked not more than 10 years, approached me at Old Kampala Police Station. “They are saying that I made her pregnant, but how?” the boy wondered.

“I am still young. I do not even have pubic hair like the other three boys who first slept with her the other night!” he added.

He was one of the children who go to the Police station or are taken there by Good Samaritans when they get lost.

Apart from the Central Police Station (CPS) in Kampala, which has rooms, and Kawempe Police, which houses them in a container, other Police stations do not have accommodation for lost children.

They sleep under counters and some are taken to impounded vehicles, where they indulge in indecent behaviour without restriction.


Meeting the children

I held the boy’s hand as we looked for the other children; there were 10 (six boys and four girls), who were also stranded at the station. They had reportedly spent up to two weeks there, waiting for their relatives or Good Samaritans to rescue them.

They sleep in an old minibus, which is parked at the station. Because there is no Police officer charged with overseeing their welfare, they indulge in sex as others watch. Among those who watched were two siblings, aged five and six.

The 12-year-old girl, who was worried that she could be pregnant, said the boys had promised to buy her chapati and soda and none of them used a condom.

I remembered the sick boy I rescued a month ago at this station. On reaching Mulago Hospital, a doctor discovered that the 14-year-old was HIV positive. The boy later explained how he had escaped from home two months earlier, without his ARVs. This left me wondering how many children infect each other by engaging in adult games.

The girl told me she was bleeding and had abdominal pains. She had never experienced menstruation and it could have been her first time. She confessed that she slept with the boys in order to get money to buy something to eat.

“We only get lunch from the Policemen, which also comes late,” she said.

Police incapacitated

The officer-in-charge at Old Kampala Police Station, Emmanuel Ochamringa, says he was not aware of the allegations about the children. He, however, appeals to organisations to assist them with, at least, a container like the one at Kawempe Police Station for the children to have a place to sleep.

“Whenever it rains, the children cannot fit in the tiny office being used by both the Family Protection and the Community Police units. They take shelter in the neighbourhood, which is risky,” Ochamringa noted.

He appealed for funding, saying Policemen used their money to buy the children breakfast, soap and sometimes, clothes.

The officer in-charge of the Family and Child Protection Unit at Old Kampala, Rebecca Araba, says the Police are overwhelmed.

Araba says they have to sort out the children, depending on whether they can identify their original homes or their preferred destinations. The Police then take them back home.

“It’s always organisations like Raising Voices and CEDOVIP which assist us to transport them back,” she says.

Araba adds that children who have nowhere to go are handed over to the probation office.

Araba says Naguru Remand Home does not take in children above 12 years, adding that they are taken to Kampiringisa from where they always escape.

At Kawempe Police Station, boys above seven years are separated from girls. Boys sleep at the counters and girls are given a container.

They are protected not only from their fellow children, but also from indisciplined Policemen.

Asked why they kept the children at the stations, an officer at Kawempe said it was not easy to look for the children’s families or find other families to take them to. “It does not help sending them off very fast and receiving them back after a week. It is only the emergency cases of abandoned babies or those below three years whom we have to rush to babies homes for the necessary care,” the officer said.

POLICE SEEK HELP

The officer-in-charge at CPS in Kampala, Ketty Nandi, says her unit does not have a budget to care for abandoned children.

“At times, the children are not even Ugandan. We have to contact embassies, especially those of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya,” Nandi says.

The commissioner for the Family and Child Protection Unit at the Police headquarters, Maurine Atuhairwe, says: “The number of abandoned and lost children is increasing daily. We don’t have operational funds to feed, house, treat or transport them back to their relatives and it is the reason we turn to different NGOs for assistance.”

Referring to the Children’s Act, Atuhairwe says it is not the mandate of the Police to resettle such children, but that of local leaders and probation offices.

“We find ourselves in a tight corner, where we cannot abandon the children, but we are not empowered to give them excellent care. I urge parents to take good care of their children so that they do not run away from home. Teenagers should also abstain from sex because most of the abandoned babies are a result of unwanted pregnancies,” she noted.

Atuhairwe also called on the probation unit to set up venues where the children can be accommodated.

She disclosed that some parents do not want to be reunited with their children. “In fact, there are cases when we finally trace relatives of abandoned children and they are too poor to accept them back. The children are another mouth to feed!” she says.

In Kampala, Naguru Reception Centre, which is supposed to host such abandoned children, is filled to capacity. The centre was built in the 1960s, with a capacity of about 50 children, but it currently accommodates over 300.

Other reception centres are found in Mbale, Fort Portal and Gulu districts. Unfortunately, the Police explain, the centres do not receive children over 11 years, forcing them to stay longer at Police stations as officers sort out where to take them.

Police advised


Fred Onduri Machulu, a commissioner for youth and children affairs at the gender ministry, advised the Police to always hand the lost children over to probation officers who are found in all districts.

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